The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Master-Christian
by Marie Corelli
(#4 in our series by Marie Corelli)
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Title: The Master-Christian
Author: Marie Corelli
Release Date: July, 2003 [Etext #4285] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on December 30, 2001]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Master-Christian
by Marie Corelli
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THE MASTER-CHRISTIAN
By MARIE CORELLI
AUTHOR OF
"Thelma," "Ardath," "Innocent," "The Treasure of Heaven," etc.
TO ALL THOSE CHURCHES WHO QUARREL IN THE NAME OF CHRIST
The Master-Christian.
I.
All the bells were ringing the Angelus. The sun was sinking;--and from the many quaint and beautiful grey towers which crown the ancient city of Rouen, the sacred chime pealed forth melodiously, floating with sweet and variable tone far up into the warm autumnal air. Market women returning to their cottage homes after a long day's chaffering disposal of their fruit, vegetable, and flowerwares in the town, paused in their slow trudge along the dusty road and crossed themselves devoutly,--a bargeman, lazily gliding down the river on his flat unwieldly craft, took his pipe from his mouth, lifted his cap mechanically, and muttered more from habit than reflection--"Sainte Marie, Mere de Dieu, priez pour nous!"--and some children running out of school, came to a sudden standstill, listening and glancing at each other, as though silently questioning whether they should say the old church-formula among themselves or no? Whether, for example, it might not be more foolish than wise to repeat it? Yes;--even though there was a rumour that the CardinalArchbishop of a certain small, half-forgotten, but once historically-famed Cathedral town of France had come to visit Rouen that day,--a Cardinal-Archbishop reputed to be so pure of heart and simple in nature, that the people of his far-off and limited diocese regarded him almost as a saint,--would it be right or reasonable for them, as the secularly educated children of modern Progress, to murmur an "Angelus Domini," while the bells rang? It was a doubtful point;--for the school they attended was a Government one, and prayers were neither taught nor encouraged there, France having for a time put God out of her national institutions. Nevertheless, the glory of that banished Creator shone in the deepening glow of the splendid heavens,--and--from the silver windings of the Seine which, turning crimson in the light, looped and garlanded the time-honoured old city as with festal knots of rosy ribbon, up to the trembling tops of the tall poplar trees fringing the river banks,--the warm radiance palpitated with a thousand ethereal hues of soft and changeful colour, transfusing all visible things into the misty semblance of some divine dwelling of dreams. Ding-dong--ding dong! The last echo of the last bell died away upon the air--the last words enunciated by devout priests in their cloistered seclusion were said--"In hora mortis nostrae! Amen!"--the market women went on their slow way homeward,--the children scampered off in different directions, easily forgetful of the Old-World petition they had thought of, yet left unuttered,--the bargeman and his barge slipped quietly away together down the windings of the river out of sight;-- the silence following the clangour of the chimes was deep and impressive--and the great Sun had all the heaven to himself as he went down. Through the beautiful rose-window of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, he flashed his parting rays, weaving bright patterns of ruby, gold and amethyst on the worn pavement of the ancient pile which enshrines the tomb of Richard the Lion-Hearted, as also that of Henry the Second, husband to Catherine de Medicis and lover of the brilliant Diane de Poitiers,--and one broad beam fell purpling aslant into the curved and fretted choir-chapel especially dedicated to the Virgin, there lighting up with a warm glow the famous alabaster tomb known as "Le Mourant" or "The Dying One." A strange and awesome piece of sculpture truly, is this same "Mourant"!-- showing, as it does with deft and almost appalling exactitude, the last convulsion of a strong man's body gripped in the death-agony. No delicate delineator of shams and conventions was the artist of olden days whose ruthless chisel shaped these stretched sinews, starting veins, and swollen eyelids half-closed over the tired eyes!--he must have been a sculptor of truth,--truth downright and relentless,--truth divested of all graceful coverings, and nude as the "Dying One" thus realistically portrayed. Ugly truth too,-- unpleasant to the sight of the worldly and pleasure-loving tribe who do not care to be reminded of the common fact that they all, and we all, must die. Yet the late sunshine flowed very softly on and over the ghastly white, semi-transparent form, outlining it with as much tender glory as the gracious figure of Mary Virgin herself, bending with outstretched hands from a grey niche, fine as a cobweb of old lace on which a few dim jewels are sewn. Very beautiful, calm and restful at this hour was "Our Lady's Chapel," with its high, dark intertwisting arches, mutilated statues, and ancient tattered battle-banners hanging from the black roof and swaying gently with every little breath of wind. The air, perfumed with incense-odours, seemed weighted with the memory of prayers and devotional silences,- -and in the midst of it all, surrounded by the defaced and crumbling emblems of life and death, and the equally decaying symbols of immortality, with the splendours of the sinking sun shedding roseate haloes about him, walked one for whom eternal truths outweighed all temporal seemings,--Cardinal Felix Bonpre, known favourably, and sometimes alluded to jestingly at the Vatican, as "Our good Saint Felix." Tall and severely thin, with fine worn features of ascetic and spiritual delicacy, he had the indefinably removed air of a scholar and thinker, whose life was not, and never could be in accordance with the latter-day customs of the world; the mild blue eyes, clear and steadfast, most eloquently suggested "the peace of God that passeth all understanding";--and the sensitive intellectual lines of the mouth and chin, which indicated strength and determined will, at the same time declared that both strength and will were constantly employed in the doing of good and the avoidance of evil. No dark furrows of hesitation, cowardice, cunning, meanness or weakness marred the expressive dignity and openness of the Cardinal's countenance,--the very poise of his straight spare figure and the manner in which he moved, silently asserted that inward grace of spirit without which there is no true grace of body,--and as he paused in his slow pacing to and fro to gaze half-wistfully, half-mournfully upon the almost ghastly artistic achievement of "Le Mourant" he sighed, and his lips moved as if in prayer. For the brief, pitiful history of human life is told in that antique and richly-wrought alabaster,--its beginning, its ambition, and its end. At the summit of the shrine, an exquisite bas-relief shows first of all the infant clinging to its mother's breast,--a stage lower down is seen the boy in the eager flush of youth, speeding an arrow to its mark from the bent bow,--then, on a still larger, bolder scale of design is depicted the proud man in the zenith of his career, a noble knight riding forth to battle and to victory, armed cap-a-pie, his war-steed richly caparisoned, his lance in rest,--and finally, on the sarcophagus itself is stretched his nude and helpless form, with hands clenched in the last gasping struggle for breath, and every muscle strained and fighting against the pangs of dissolution.
"But," said the Cardinal half aloud, with the gentle dawning of a tender smile brightening the fine firm curve of his lips,--"it is not the end! The end here, no doubt;--but the beginning--THERE!"
He raised his eyes devoutly, and instinctively touched the silver crucifix hanging by its purple ribbon at his breast. The orange-red glow of the sun encompassed him with fiery rings, as though it would fain consume his thin, black-garmented form after the fashion in which flames consumed the martyrs of old,--the worn figures of mediaeval saints in their half-broken niches stared down upon him stonily, as though they would have said,--"So we thought,--even we!- -and for our thoughts and for our creed we suffered willingly,--yet lo, we have come upon an age of the world in which the people know us not,--or knowing, laugh us all to scorn."
But Cardinal Bonpre being only conscious of a perfect faith, discovered no hints of injustice or despair in the mutilated shapes of the Evangelists surrounding him,--they were the followers of Christ,--and being such, they were bound to rejoice in the tortures which made their glory. It was only the unhappy souls who suffered not for Christ at all, whom he considered were truly to be compassionated.
"And if," he murmured as he moved on--"this knight of former days, who is now known to us chiefly, alas! as 'Le Mourant', was a faithful servant of our Blessed Lord, why then it is as well with him as with any of the holy martyrs. May his soul rest in peace!"
Stopping an instant at the next sculptural wonder in his way--the elaborately designed tomb of Cardinal Amboise, concerning the eternal fate of which "brother in Christ" the good Felix had no scruples or fears whatever, he stepped softly down from the choirchapel where he had been wandering to and fro for some time in solitary musings, and went towards the great central nave. It was quite empty,--not even a weary silk-weaver, escaped from one of the ever-working looms of the city, had crept in to tell her beads. Broad, vacant, vast, and suggestive of a sublime desolation, the grand length and width of the Latin Cross which shapes the holy precincts, stretched into vague distance, one or two lamps were burning dimly at little shrines set in misty dark recesses,--a few votive candles, some lit, some smouldered out, leaned against each other crookedly in their ricketty brass stand, fronting a battered statue of the Virgin. The Angelus had ceased ringing some ten minutes since,--and now one solemn bell, swinging high up in the Cathedral towers, tolled forth the hour of six, slowly and with a strong pulsating sound which seemed to shake the building down to its very vaults and deep foundations. As the last stroke shivered and thundered through the air, a strain of music, commencing softly, then swelling into fuller melody, came floating from aloft, following the great bell's vibration. Half way down the nave, just as he was advancing slowly towards the door of egress, this music overtook the Cardinal like an arresting angel, bringing him to a sudden pause.
"The organist practises late," he said aloud, as though speaking to some invisible companion, and then was silent, listening. Round him and above him surged the flood of rich and dulcet harmony,--the sunset light through the blue and red stained-glass windows grew paler and paler--the towering arches which sprang, as it were, from slender stem-like side-columns up to full-flowering boughs of Gothic ornamentation, crossing and re-crossing above the great High Altar, melted into a black dimness,--and then--all at once, without any apparent cause, a strange, vague suggestion of something supernatural and unseen began suddenly to oppress the mind of the venerable prelate with a curious sense of mingled awe and fear. Trembling a little, he knew not why, he softly drew a chair from one of the shadowy corners, where all such seats were piled away out of sight so that they might not disfigure the broad and open beauty of the nave, and, sitting down, he covered his eyes with one hand and strove to rouse himself from the odd, half-fainting sensation which possessed him. How glorious now was the music that poured like a torrent from the hidden organ-loft! How full of searching and potential proclamation!--the proclamation of an eternal, unguessed mystery, for which no merely human speech might ever find fit utterance! Some divine declaration of God's absolute omnipresence,-- or of Heaven's sure nearness,--touched the heart of Felix Bonpre, as he sat like an enchanted dreamer among the tender interweavings of solemn and soothing sound;--carried out of himself and beyond his own existence, he could neither pray nor think, till, all at once, upon the peaceful and devout silence of his soul, some very old, very familiar words struck sharply as though they were quite new,-- as though they were invested suddenly with strange and startling significance--
"When the son of Man cometh, think ye He shall find faith on earth?"
Slowly he withdrew his hand from his eyes and gazed about him, halfstartled, half-appalled. Had anyone spoken these words?--or had they risen of themselves as it were in letters of fire out of the sea of music that was heaving and breaking tumultuously about him?
"WHEN THE SON OF MAN COMETH, THINK YE HE SHALL FIND FAITH ON EARTH?"
The question seemed to be whispered in his ears with a thrilling intensity of meaning; and moved by a sudden introspective and retrospective repentance, the gentle old man began mentally to grope his way back over the past years of his life, and to ask himself whether in very truth that life had been well or ill spent? Viewed by his own inner contemplative vision, Cardinal Felix Bonpre saw in himself nothing but wilful sin and total unworthiness;--but in the eyes of those he had served and assisted, he was a blameless priest,--a man beloved of God, and almost visibly encompassed by the guardianship of angels. He had been singularly happy in his election to a diocese which, though it had always had an Archbishop for its spiritual head, boasted scarce as many inhabitants as a prosperous English village,--and the result of this was that he had lived altogether away from the modern world, passing most of his time in reading and study,--while for relaxation, he permitted himself only the innocent delight of growing the finest roses in his neighbourhood. But he had pious scruples even about this rosegrowing fancy of his,--he had a lurking distrust of himself in it, as to whether it was not a purely selfish pleasure,--and therefore, to somewhat smooth the circumstance, he never kept any of the choice blooms for his own gratification, but gave the best of them with a trust, as simple as it was beautiful, to the altar of the Virgin, sending all the rest to the bedsides of the sick and sorrowful, or to the coffins of the dead. It never once occurred to him that the "Cardinal's roses," as they were called, were looked upon by the poor people who received them as miraculous flowers long after they had withered,--that special virtues were assigned to them--and that dying lips kissed their fragrant petals with almost as much devotion as the holy crucifix, because it was instinctively believed that they contained a mystic blessing. He knew nothing of all this;--he was too painfully conscious of his own shortcomings,--and of late years, feeling himself growing old, and realising that every day brought him nearer to that verge which all must cross in passing from Time into Eternity, he had been sorely troubled in mind. He was wise with the wisdom which comes of deep reading, lonely meditation, and fervent study,--he had instructed himself in the modern schools of thought as well as the ancient,--and though his own soul was steadfastly set upon the faith he followed, he was compassionately aware of a strange and growing confusion in the world,--a combination of the elements of evil, which threatened, or seemed to threaten, some terrible and imminent disaster. This sorrowful foreboding had for a long time preyed upon him, physically as well as mentally; always thin, he had grown thinner and more careworn, till at the beginning of the year his health had threatened to break down altogether. Whereupon those who loved him, growing alarmed, summoned a physician, who, (with that sage experience of doctors to whom thought-trouble is an inexplicable and incurable complication) at once pronounced change of air to be absolutely necessary. Cardinal Bonpre must travel, he said, and seek rest and minddistraction in the contemplation of new and varying scenes. With smiling and resigned patience the Cardinal obeyed not so much the command of his medical attendant, as the anxious desire of his people,--and thereupon departed from his own Cathedral-town on a tour of several months, during which time he inwardly resolved to try and probe for himself the truth of how the world was going,-- whether on the downward road to destruction and death, or up the high ascents of progress and life. He went alone and unattended,--he had arranged to meet his niece in Paris and accompany her to her father's house in Rome,--and he was on his way to Paris now. But he had purposely made a long and round-about journey through France with the intention of studying the religious condition of the people; and by the time he reached Rouen, the old sickness at his heart had rather increased than diminished. The confusion and the trouble of the world were not mere hearsay,--they in very truth existed. And what seemed to the Cardinal to be the chief cause of the general bewilderment of things, was the growing lack of faith in God and a Hereafter. How came this lack of faith into the Christian world? Sorrowfully he considered the question,--and persistently the same answer always asserted itself--that the blame rested principally with the Church itself, and its teachers and preachers, and not only in one, but in all forms of Creed.
"We have erred in some vital manner," mused the Cardinal, with a feeling of strange personal contrition, as though he were more to blame than any of his compeers--"We have failed to follow the Master's teaching in its true perfection. We have planted in ourselves a seed of corruption, and we have permitted--nay, some of us have encouraged--its poisonous growth, till it now threatens to contaminate the whole field of labour."
And he thought of the words of St. John the Divine to the Church of Sardis--
"_I_ KNOW THY WORKS,--THAT THOU HAST A NAME THAT THOU LIVEST AND ART DEAD.
"BE WATCHFUL, AND STRENGTHEN THE THINGS THAT REMAIN, THAT ARE READY TO DIE,--FOR _I_ HAVE NOT FOUND THY WORKS PERFECT BEFORE GOD. REMEMBER THEREFORE HOW THOU HAST RECEIVED AND HEARD, AND HOLD FAST AND REPENT.
"IF, THEREFORE, THOU SHALT NOT WATCH, _I_ WILL COME ON THEE AS A THIEF, AND THOU SHALL NOT KNOW WHAT HOUR I WILL COME UPON THEE.
"THOU HAST A FEW NAMES EVEN IN SARDIS, WHICH HAVE NOT DEFILED THEIR GARMENTS, AND THEY SHALL WALK WITH ME IN WHITE, FOR THEY ARE WORTHY.
"HE THAT OVERCOMETH, THE SAME SHALL BE CLOTHED IN WHITE RAIMENT; AND I WILL NOT BLOT HIS NAME OUT OF THE BOOK OF LIFE, BUT I WILL CONFESS HIS NAME BEFORE MY FATHER AND BEFORE HIS ANGELS."
Dimmer and duskier grew the long shadows now gathering in the Cathedral,--two of the twinkling candles near the Virgin's statue suddenly sank in their sockets with a spluttering noise and guttered out,--the solemn music of the organ continued, growing softer and softer as it sounded, till it crept through the vastness of the building like a light breeze wafted from the sea, bringing with it suggestions of far flower-islands in the tropics, golden shores kissed by languid foam, and sweet-throated birds singing, and still the Cardinal sat thinking of griefs and cares and inexplicable human perplexities, which were not his own, but which seemed to burden the greater portion of the world. He drew no comparisons,--he never considered that, as absolutely as day is day and night is night, his own beautiful and placid life, lived in the faith of God and Christ, was tortured by no such storm-tossed tribulation as that which affected the lives of many others,--and that the old trite saying, almost despised because so commonplace, namely that "goodness makes happiness," is as eternally true as that the sun shines in heaven, and that it is only evil which creates misery. To think of himself in the matter never occurred to him; had he for a moment entertained the merest glimmering of an idea that he was better, and therefore happier than most men, he would, in his own opinion, have been guilty of unpardonable arrogance and presumption. What he saw, and what sincerely and unselfishly grieved him, was that the people of this present age were unhappy--discontented--restless,--that something of the simple joy of existence had gone out of the world,- -that even the brilliant discoveries of science and the so-called "progress" of men only served apparently to increase their discontent,--that when they were overcome by sorrow, sickness, or death, they had little philosophy and less faith to support them,-- and that except in the few cases where Christ was still believed in, they gave way altogether and broke down like frightened children in a storm.
"Thou hast a few names, even in Sardis!" A few names! But how few! Universal weariness of life seemed a disease of the time,--there was nothing that seemed to satisfy--even the newest and most miraculous results of scientific research and knowledge ceased to be interesting after the first week of their triumphant public demonstration and acceptance.
"The world must be growing old," said the Cardinal sadly,--"It must be losing its vigour,--it is too tired to lift itself to the light; too weary and worn out to pray. Perhaps the end of all present things is at hand,--perhaps it is the beginning of the promised 'new heavens and new earth.'"
Just then the organ-music ceased abruptly, and the Cardinal, waking from his thoughts as from a trance, rose up slowly and stood for a moment facing the great High Altar, which at that distance could only just be discerned among its darkening surroundings by the little flickering flame of the suspended lamp burning dimly before the holy Tabernacle, wherein was locked with golden key behind snowy doors of spotless marble, the sacred and mysterious Host.
"WHEN THE SON OF MAN COMETH, THINK YE HE SHALL FIND FAITH ON EARTH?"
Again that searching question repeated itself in his mind so distinctly as to be echoed in his ears,--the deep silence around him seemed waiting expectantly for some reply, and moved by a strange spirit of exaltation within him, he answered half aloud--
"Yes! Surely He will find faith,--if only in the few! There are 'a few names, even in Sardis!' In the sorrowful and meek,--in the poor and patient and downtrodden martyrs of humanity, He will find faith;--in the very people He died to save He will discover that most precious and inspiring of all virtues! But in the so-called wise and brilliant favourites of the world He will not find it,--in the teachers of the people He will search for it in vain. By the writers of many books He shall find Himself scorned and rejected,-- in the cheap and spurious philosophy of modern egotists He will see His doctrines mocked at and denounced as futile. Few men there are in these days who would deny themselves for His sake, or sacrifice a personal passion for the purer honouring of His name. Inasmuch as the pride of great learning breeds arrogance, so the more the wonder of God's work is displayed to us, the more are we dazzled and confounded; and so in our blindness we turn from the worship of the Creator to that of His creation, forgetting that all the visible universe is but the outcome or expression of the hidden Divine Intelligence behind it. What of the marvels of the age!--the results of science!--the strange psychic prescience and knowledge of things more miraculous yet to be!--these are but hints and warnings of the approach of God himself--'coming in a cloud with power and great glory'!"
As he thus spoke, he raised his hand out of old habit acquired in preaching, and a ray from the after-glow of the sunken sun lit up the jewel in the apostolic ring he wore, warming its pale green lustre to a dim violet spark as of living fire. His fine features were for a moment warm with fervour and feeling,--then,--suddenly, he thought of the great world outside all creeds,--of the millions and millions of human beings who neither know nor accept Christ,--of the Oriental races with their intricate and beautiful systems of philosophy,--of savage tribes, conquered and unconquered,--of fierce yet brave Turkish warriors who are, with all their faults, at any rate true to the faith they profess--and lastly--more than all--of the thousands upon thousands of Christians in Christian lands, who no more believe in Him whose holy name they take in vain, than in any Mumbo-Jumbo fetish of untaught barbarians. Were these to perish utterly? Had THEY no immortal souls to save? Had the churches been at work for eighteen hundred years and more, to bring about no better results than this,--namely that there were only "A FEW NAMES IN SARDIS"? If so, were not the churches criminally to blame? Yea, even holy Mother-Church, whose foundation rested on the memory of the Lying Apostle? Rapidly, and as if suggested by some tormenting devil, these thoughts possessed the Cardinal's brain, burning into it and teasing and agonising the tender fibres of his conscience and his soul. Could God, the great loving Creator of countless universes, be so cruel as to wantonly destroy millions of helpless creatures in one small planet, because through ignorance or want of proper teaching they had failed to find Christ?--was it possible that he could only extend his mercy and forgiveness to the "few names in Sardis"?
"Yet our world is but a pin's point in the eternal immensities," argued the Cardinal almost wistfully--"Only a few can expect to be saved."
Nevertheless, this reasoning did not satisfy him. Again, what of these millions? Were they to be forever lost? Then why so much waste of life? Waste of life! There is no such thing as waste of life-- this much modern science the venerable Felix knew. Nothing can be wasted,--not a breath, not a scene, not a sound. All is treasured up in Nature's store-house and can be eternally reproduced at Nature's will. Then what was to become of the myriads of human beings and immortal souls whom the Church had failed to rescue? THE CHURCH HAD FAILED! Why had it failed? Whose the fault?--whose the weakness?-- for fault and weakness were existent somewhere.
"WHEN THE SON OF MAN COMETH, THINK YE HE SHALL FIND FAITH ON EARTH?"
"No!" whispered the Cardinal, suddenly forced, as it were in his own despite, to contradict his former assertion--"No!" He paused, and mechanically making his way towards the door of the Cathedral, he dipped his fingers into the holy water that glistened dimly in its marble basin near the black oak portal, and made the sign of the cross on brow and breast;--"He will not find faith where faith should be pre-eminent. It must be openly confessed--repentingly admitted,--He will NOT find faith even in the Church He founded,--I say it to our shame!"
His head drooped, as though his own words had wounded him, and with an air of deep dejection he slowly passed out. The huge iron-bound door swung noiselessly to and fro behind him,--the grave-toned bell in the tower struck seven. Outside, a tender twilight mellowed the atmosphere and gave brightness to approaching evening; inside, the long shadows, gathering heavily in the aisles and richly sculptured hollows of the side-chapels, brought night before its time. The last votive candle at the Virgin's shrine flickered down and disappeared like a firefly in dense blackness,--the last echo of the bell died in a tremulous vibration up among the high-springing roof-arches, and away into the solemn corners where the nameless dead reposed,-- the last impression of life and feeling vanished with the retreating figure of the Cardinal--and the great Cathedral, the Sanctuary and House of God, took upon itself the semblance of a funeral vault,--a dark, Void, wherein but one red star, the lamp before the Altar, burned.
II.
Lovely to a poet or an artist's eye is the unevenly-built and picturesque square of Rouen in which the Cathedral stands,--lovely, and suggestive of historical romance in all its remote corners, its oddly-shaped houses, its by-ways and crooked little flights of steps leading to nowhere, its gables and slanting roofs, and its utter absence of all structural proportion. A shrine here, a broken statue there,--a half-obliterated coat-of-arms over an old gateway,--a rusty sconce fitted fast into the wall to support a lantern no longer needed in these days of gas and electricity,--an ancient fountain overgrown with weed, or a projecting vessel of stone for holy water, in which small birds bathe and disport themselves after a shower of rain,--those are but a few of the curious fragments of a past time which make the old place interesting to the student, and more than fascinating to the thinker and dreamer. The wonderful "Hotel Bourgtheroulde," dating from the time of Francis the First, and bearing on its sculptured walls the story of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, in company with the strangely-contrasting "Allegories", from Petrarch's "Triumphs", is enough in itself to keep the mind engrossed with fanciful musings for an hour. How did Petrarch and the Field of the Cloth of Gold come together in the brain of the sculptor who long ago worked at these ancient basreliefs ? One wonders, but the wonder is in vain,--there is no explanation;--and the "Bourgtheroulde" remains a pleasing and fantastic architectural mystery. Close by, through the quaint old streets of the Epicerie and "Gross Horloge", walked no doubt in their young days the brothers Corneille, before they evolved from their meditative souls the sombre and heavy genius of French tragedy,--and not very far away, up one of those little shadowy winding streets and out at the corner, stands the restored house of Diane de Poitiers, so sentient and alive in its very look that one almost expects to see at the quaint windows the beautiful wicked face of the woman who swayed the humours of a king by her smile or her frown.
Cardinal Bonpre, walking past the stately fourteenth-century Gothic pile of the Palais de Justice, thought half-vaguely of some of these things,--but they affected him less than they might have done had his mind not been full of the grand music he had just heard in the Cathedral, and of the darkness that had slowly gathered there, as though in solemn commingling with the darkness which had at the same time settled over his soul. A great oppression weighed upon him;-- almost he judged himself guilty of mortal sin, for had he not said aloud and boldly, while facing the High Altar of the Lord, that even in the Church itself faith was lacking? Yes, he, a CardinalArchbishop, had said this thing; he had as it were proclaimed it on the silence of the sacred precincts,--and had he not in this, acted unworthily of his calling? Had he not almost uttered blasphemy? Grieved and puzzled, the good Felix went on his way, almost unseeingly, towards the humble inn where he had elected to remain for the brief period of his visit to Rouen,--an inn where no one stayed save the very poorest of travellers, this fact being its chief recommendation in the eyes of the Cardinal. For it must be conceded, that viewed by our latter-day ideas of personal comfort and convenience, the worthy prelate had some very old-world and fantastic notions. One of these notions was a devout feeling that he should, so far as it was humanly possible, endeavour to obey the Master whose doctrine he professed to follow. This, it will be admitted, was a curious idea. Considering the bold and blasphemous laxity of modern Christian customs, it was surely quite a fanatical idea. Yet he had his own Church-warrant for such a rule of conduct; and chief among the Evangelic Counsels writ down for his example was Voluntary Poverty. Yes!--Voluntary Poverty,--notwithstanding the countless treasures lying idle and wasted in the Vatican, and the fat sinecures enjoyed by bishops and archbishops; which things exist in direct contradiction and disobedience to the command of Christ. Christ Himself lived on the earth in poverty,--He visited only the poorest and simplest habitations,--and never did He set His sacred foot within a palace, save the palace of the High Priest where He was condemned to die. Much symbolic meaning did Cardinal Felix discover in this incident,--and often would he muse upon it gravely.
"The Divine is condemned to die in all palaces," he would say,--"It is only in the glorious world of Nature, under the sunlit or starlit expanse of heaven, that the god in us can live; and it was not without some subtle cause of intended instruction to mankind that the Saviour always taught His followers in the open air."
There was what might be called a palace hard by, to which Bonpre had been invited, and where he would have been welcome to stay as long as he chose,--the house of the Archbishop of Rouen--a veritable abode of luxury as compared with the Hotel Poitiers, which was a dingy little tumble-down building, very old, and wearing a conscious air of feebleness and decrepitude which was almost apologetic. Its small windows, set well back in deeply hollowed carved arches had a lack-lustre gleam, as of very aged eyes under shelving brows,--its narrow door, without either bolts or bars, hung half-aslant upon creaking rusty hinges, and was never quite shut either by day or night,--yet from the porch a trailing mass of "creeping jenny" fell in a gold-dotted emerald fringe over the head of any way-worn traveller passing in,--making a brightness in a darkness, and suggesting something not altogether uncheery in the welcome provided. They were very humble folk who kept the Hotel Poitiers,-- the host, Jean Patoux, was a small market-gardener who owned a plot of land outside Rouen, which he chiefly devoted to the easy growing of potatoes and celery--his wife had her hands full with the domestic business of the hotel and the cares of her two children, Henri and Babette, the most incorrigible imps of mischief that ever lived in Rouen or out of it. Madame Patoux, large of body, unwieldy in movement, but clean as a new pin, and with a fat smile of perpetual contentment on her round visage, professed to be utterly worn to death by the antics of these children of hers,--but nevertheless she managed to grow stouter every day with a persistency and fortitude which denoted the reserved forces of her nature,--and her cooking, always excellent, never went wrong because Babette had managed to put her doll in one of the saucepans, or Henri had essayed to swim a paper boat in the soup. Things went on somehow; Patoux himself was perfectly satisfied with his small earnings and position in life--Madame Patoux felt that "le bon Dieu" was specially engaged in looking after her,--and as long as the wicked Babette and the wickeder Henri threw themselves wildly into her arms and clung round her fat neck imploring pardon after any and every misdeed, and sat for a while "en penitence" in separate corners reading the "Hours of Mary", they might be as naughty as they chose over and over again so far as the good-natured mother was concerned. Just now, however, unusual calm appeared to have settled on the Patoux household,--an atmosphere of general placidity and peace prevailed, which had the effect of imparting almost a stately air to the tumble-down house, and a suggestion of luxury to the poorly-furnished rooms Madame Patoux herself was conscious of a mysterious dignity in her surroundings, and moved about on her various household duties with less bounce and fuss than was her ordinary custom,--and Henri and Babette sat quiet without being told to do so, moved apparently by a sudden and inexplicable desire to study their lessons. All this had been brought about by the advent of Cardinal Bonpre, who with his kind face, gentle voice and beneficent manner, had sought and found lodging at the Hotel Poitiers, notwithstanding Madame Patoux's profuse apologies for the narrowness and inconvenience of her best rooms.
"For look you, Monseigneur," she murmured, deferentially, "How should we have ever expected such an honour as the visit of a holy Cardinal-Archbishop to our poor little place! There are many new houses on the Boulevards which could have accommodated Monseigneur with every comfort,--and that he should condescend to bestow the blessing of his presence upon us,--ah! it was a special dispensation of Our Lady which was too amazing and wonderful to be at once comprehended!"
Thus Madame Patoux, with breathless pauses between her sentences, and many profound curtseyings; but the good Cardinal waived aside her excuses and protestations, and calling her "My daughter", signed the cross on her brow with paternal gentleness, assuring her that he would give her as little trouble as any other casual visitor.
"Trouble!--Ah, heaven!--could anything be a trouble for Monseigneur!" and Madame Patoux, moved to tears by the quiet contentment with which the Cardinal took possession of the two bare, common rooms which were the best she could place at his disposal, hurried away, and hustling Henri and Babette like two little rolypoly balls before her into the kitchen, she told them with much emphasis that there was a saint in the house,--a saint fit to be the holy companion of any of those who had their niches up in the Cathedral near the great rose-window,--and that if they were good children they would very likely see an angel coming down from heaven to visit him. Babette put her finger in her mouth and looked incredulous. She had a vague belief in angels,--but Henri, with the cheap cynicism of the modern French lad was anything but sure about them.
"Mother," said he, "There's a boy in our school who says there is no God at all, and that it's no use having priests or Cardinals or Cathedrals,--it's all rubbish and humbug!"
"Poor little miserable monster!" exclaimed Madame Patoux, as she peered into the pot where the soup for the Cardinal's supper was simmering--"He is arranging himself to become a thief or a murderer, be sure of that, Henri!--and thou, who art trained in all thy holy duties by the good Pere Laurent, who teaches thee everything which the school is not wise enough to teach, ought never to listen to such wickedness. If there were no God, we should not be alive at all, thou foolish child!--for it is only our blessed Saviour and the saints that keep the world going."
Henri was silent,--Babette looked at him and made a little grimace of scorn.
"If the Cardinal is a saint," she said--"he should be able to perform a miracle. The little Fabien Doucet has been lame for seven years; we shall bring him to Monseigneur, and he will mend his leg and make him well. Then we shall believe in saints afterwards."
Madame Patoux turned her warm red face round from the fire over which she was bending, and stared at her precocious offspring aghast.
"What! You will dare to address yourself to the Cardinal!" she cried vociferously--"You will dare to trouble him with such foolishness? Mon Dieu!--is it possible to be so wicked! But listen to me well!-- If you presume to say one saucy word to Monseigneur, you shall be punished! What have you to do with the little Fabien Doucet?--the poor child is sickly and diseased by the will of God."
"I don't see why it should be God's will to make a boy sickly and diseased--" began the irrepressible Henri, when his mother cut him short with a stamp of her foot and a cry of--
"Tais-toi! Silence! Wicked boy!--thou wilt kill me with thy naughty speeches! All this evil comes of the school,--I would thy father had never been compelled to send thee there!"
As she said this with a vast amount of heat and energy, Henri, seized by some occult and inexplicable emotion, burst without warning into loud and fitful weeping, the sound whereof resembled the yelling of a tortured savage,--and Babette, petrified at first by the appalling noise, presently gave way likewise, and shrieked a wild accompaniment.
"What ails my children?" said a gentle voice, distinct and clear in its calm intonation even in the midst of the uproar, and Cardinal Bonpre, tall and stately, suddenly appeared upon the threshold-- "What little sorrows are these?"
Henri's roar ceased abruptly,--Babette's shrill wailing dropped into awed silence. Both youngsters stared amazed at the venerable Felix, whose face and figure expressed such composed dignity and sweetness; and Madame Patoux, nastily and with frequent gasps for breath, related the history of the skirmish.
"And what will become of such little devils when they grow older, the Blessed Virgin only knows!" she groaned--"For even now they are so suspicious in nature, that they will not believe in their dinner till they see it!"
Something like a faint grin widened the mouths of Henri and Babette at this statement made with so much distressed fervour by their angry mother,--but the Cardinal did not smile. His face had grown very pale and grave, almost stern.
"The children are quite right, my daughter," he said gently,--"I am no saint! I have performed no miracles. I am a poor sinner,-- striving to do well, but alas!--for ever striving in vain. The days of noble living are past,--and we are all too much fallen in the ways of error to deserve that our Lord should bless the too often half-hearted and grudging labour of his so-called servants. Come here, ma mignonne!" he continued, calling Babette, who approached him with a curious air of half-timid boldness--"Thou art but a very little girl," he said, laying his thin white hand softly on her tumbled brown curls--"Nevertheless, I should be a very foolish old man if I despised thee, or thy thoughts, or thy desire to know the truth for truth's sake. Therefore to-morrow thou shalt bring me this afflicted friend of thine, and though I have no divine gifts, I will do even as the Master commanded,--I will lay my hands on him in blessing and pray that he may be healed. More than this is not in my power, my child!--if a miracle is to be worked, it is our dear Lord only who can work it."
Gently he murmured his formal benediction,--then, turning away, he entered his own room and shut the door. Babette, grown strangely serious, turned to her brother and held out her hand, moved by one of those erratic impulses which often take sudden possession of self-willed children.
"Come into the Cathedral!" she whispered imperatively--"Come and say an Ave."
Not a word did the usually glib Henri vouchsafe in answer,--but clutching his sister's fingers in his own dirty, horny palm, he trotted meekly beside her out of the house and across the Square into the silence and darkness of Notre Dame. Their mother watched their little plump figures disappear with a feeling of mingled amazement and gratitude,--miracles were surely beginning, she thought, if a few words from the Cardinal could impress Babette and Henri with an idea of the necessity of prayer!
They were not long gone, however;--they came walking back together, still demurely hand in hand, and settled themselves quietly in a corner to study their tasks for the next day. Babette's doll, once attired as a fashionable Parisienne, and now degenerated into a oneeyed laundress with a rather soiled cap and apron, stuck out its composite arms in vain from the bench where it sat all askew, drooping its head forlornly over a dustpan,--and Henri's drum, wherewith he was wont to wake alarming echoes out of the dreamy and historical streets of Rouen, lay on its side neglected and ingloriously silent. And, as before said, peace reigned in the Patoux household,--even the entrance of Papa Patoux himself, fresh from his celery beds, and smelling of the earth earthy, created no particular diversion. He was a very little, very cheery, round man, was Papa Patoux; he had no ideas at all in his bullet head save that he judged everything to be very well managed in the Universe, and that he, considered simply as Patoux, was lucky in his life and labours,--also that it was an easy thing to grow celery, provided God's blessing was on the soil. For the rest, he took small care; he knew that the world wagged in different ways in different climates,- -he read his half-penny journal daily, and professed to be interested in the political situation just for the fun of the thing, but in reality he thought the French Senate a pack of fools, and wondered what they meant by always talking so much about nothing. He believed in "La Patrie" to a certain extent,--but he would have very much objected if "La Patrie" had interfered with his celery. Roughly sneaking, he understood that France was a nation, and that he was a Frenchman; and that if any enemies should presume to come into the country, it would be necessary to take up a musket and fight them out again, and defend wife, children, and celery-beds till the last breath was out of his body. Further than this simple and primitive idea of patriotism he did not go. He never bothered himself about dissentient shades of opinion, or quarrels among opposing parties. When he had to send his children to the Government school, the first thing he asked was whether they would be taught their religion there. He was told no,--that the Government objected to religious teaching, as it merely created discussion and was of no assistance whatever in the material business of life. Patoux scratched his head over this for a considerable time and ruminated deeply,--finally he smiled, a dull fat smile.
"Good!" said he--"I understand now why the Government makes such an ass of itself now and then! You cannot expect mere men to do their duty wisely without God on their side. But Pere Laurent will teach my children their prayers and catechism,--and I dare say Heaven will arrange the rest."
And he forthwith dismissed the matter from his mind. His children attended the Government school daily,--and every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoons Pere Laurent, a kindly, simplehearted old priest, took them, with several other little creatures "educated by the State", and taught them all he knew about the great France-exiled Creator of the Universe, and of His ceaseless love to sinful and blasphemous mankind.
So things went on;--and though Henri and Babette were being crammed by the national system of instruction, with learning which was destined to be of very slight use to them in their after careers, and which made them little cynics before their time, they were still sustained within bounds by the saving sense of something better than themselves,--that Something Better which silently declares itself in the beauty of the skies, the blossoming of the flowers, and the loveliness of all things wherein man has no part,--and neither of them was yet transformed into that most fearsome product of modern days, the child-Atheist, for whom there is no greater God than Self.
On this particular night when Papa Patoux returned to the bosom of his family, he, though a dull-witted man generally, did not fail to note the dove-like spirit of calm that reigned over his entire household. His wife's fat face was agreeably placid,--the children were in an orderly mood, and as he sat down to the neatly spread supper-table, he felt more convinced than ever that things were exceedingly well managed for him in this best of all possible worlds. Pausing in the act of conveying a large spoonful of steaming soup to his mouth he enquired--
"And Monseigneur, the Cardinal Bonpre,--has he also been served?"
Madame Patoux opened her round eyes wide at him.
"But certainly! Dost thou think, my little cabbage, thou wouldst get thy food before Monseigneur? That would be strange indeed!"
Papa Patoux swallowed his ladleful of soup in abashed silence.
"It was a beautiful day in the fields," he presently observed-- "There was a good smell in the earth, as if violets were growing,-- and late in the autumn though it is, there was a skylark yet singing. It was a very blue heaven, too, as blue as the robe of the Virgin, with clouds as white as little angels clinging to it."
Madame nodded. Some people might have thought Papa Patoux inclined to be poetical,--she did not. Henri and Babette listened.
"The robe of Our Lady is always blue," said Babette.
"And the angels' clothes are always white," added Henri.
Madame Patoux said nothing, but passed a second helping of soup all round. Papa Patoux smiled blandly on his offspring.
"Just so," he averred--"Blue and white are the colours of the sky, my little ones,--and Our Lady and the angels live in the sky!"
"I wonder where?" muttered Henri with his mouth half full. "The sky is nothing but miles and miles of air, and in the air there are millions and millions of planets turning round and round, larger than our world,--ever so much larger,--and nobody knows which is the largest of them all!"
"It is as thou sayest, my son," said Patoux confidently--"Nobody knows which is the largest of them all, but whichever it may be, that largest of them all belongs to Our Lady and the angels."
Henri looked at Babette, but Babette was munching watercress busily, and did not return his enquiring glances. Papa Patoux, quite satisfied with his own reasoning, continued his supper in an amiable state of mind.
"What didst thou serve to Monseigneur, my little one?" he asked his wife with a coaxing and caressing air, as though she were some delicate and dainty sylph of the woodlands, instead of being the lady of massive proportions which she undoubtedly was,--"Something of delicacy and fine flavour, doubtless?"
Madame Patoux shook her head despondingly.
"He would have nothing of that kind," she replied--"Soup maigre, and afterwards nothing but bread, dried figs, and apples to finish. Ah, Heaven! What a supper for a Cardinal-Archbishop! It is enough to make one weep!"
Patoux considered the matter solemnly.
"He is perhaps very poor?" he half queried.
"Poor, he may be," responded Madame,--"But if he is, it is surely his own fault,--whoever heard of a poor Cardinal-Archbishop! Such men can all be rich if they choose."
"Can they?" asked Henri with sudden vivacious eagerness. "How?"
But his question was not answered, for just at that moment a loud knock came at the door of the inn, and a tall broadly built personage in close canonical attire appeared in the narrow little passage of entry, attended by another smaller and very much more insignificant-looking individual.
Patoux hastily scrambled out of his chair.
"The Archbishop!" he whispered to his wife--"He himself! Our own Archbishop!"
Madame Patoux jumped up, and seizing her children, held one in each hand as she curtsied up and down.
Benedicite!" said the new-comer, lightly signing the cross in air with a sociable smile--"Do not disturb yourselves, my children! You have with you in this house the eminent Cardinal Bonpre?"
"Ah, yes, Monseigneur!" replied Madame Patoux--"Only just now he has finished his little supper. Shall I show Monseigneur to his room?"
"If you please," returned the Archbishop, still smiling benevolently--"And permit my secretary to wait with you here till I return."
With this, and an introductory wave of his hand in the direction of the attenuated and sallow-faced personage who had accompanied him, he graciously permitted Madame Patoux to humbly precede him by a few steps, and then followed her with a soft, even tread, and a sound as of rustling silk in his garments, from which a faint odour of some delicate perfume seemed wafted as he moved.
Left to entertain the Archbishop's secretary, Jean Patoux was for a minute or two somewhat embarrassed. Henri and Babette stared at the stranger with undisguised curiosity, and were apparently not favourably impressed by his appearance.
"He has white eyelashes!" whispered Henri.
"And yellow teeth," responded Babette.
Meanwhile Patoux, having scratched his bullet-head sufficiently over the matter, offered his visitor a chair.
"Sit down, sir," he said curtly.
The secretary smiled pallidly and took the proffered accommodation. Patoux again meditated. He was not skilled in the art of polite conversation, and he found himself singularly at a loss.
"It would be an objection no doubt, and an irreverance perhaps to smoke a pipe before you, Monsieur--Monsieur--"
"Cazeau," finished the secretary with another pallid smile--"Claude Cazeau, a poor scribe,--at your service! And I beg of you, Monsieur Jean Patoux, to smoke at your distinguished convenience!"
There was a faint tone of satire in his voice which struck Papa Patoux as exceedingly disagreeable, though he could not quite imagine why he found it so. He slowly reached for his pipe from the projecting shelf above the chimney, and as slowly proceeded to fill it with tobacco from a tin cannister close by.
"I do not think I have ever seen you in the town, Monsieur Cazeau," he said--"Nor at Mass in the Cathedral either?"
"No?" responded Cazeau easily, in a half-querying tone--"I do not much frequent the streets; and I only attend the first early mass on Sundays. My work for Monseigneur occupies my whole time."
"Ah!" and Patoux, having stuffed his pipe sufficiently, lit it, and proceeded to smoke peaceably--"There must be much to do. Many poor and sick who need money, and clothes, and help in every way,--and to try and do good, and give comfort to all the unhappy souls in Rouen is a hard task, even for an Archbishop."
Cazeau linked his thin hands together with an action of pious fervour and assented.
"There is a broken-hearted creature near us," pursued Patoux leisurely--"We call her Marguerite La Folle;--I have often thought I would ask Pere Laurent to speak to Monseigneur for her, that she might be released from the devils that are tearing her. She was a good girl till a year or two ago,--then some villain got the ruin of her, and she lost her wits over it. Ah,'tis a sad sight to see her now--poor Marguerite Valmond!"
"Ha!" cried Henri suddenly, pointing a grimy finger at Cazeau--"Why did you jump? Did something hurt you?"
Cazeau had indeed "jumped," as Henri put it,--that is, he had sprung up from his chair suddenly and as suddenly sat down again with an air of impatience and discomfort. He rapidly overcame whatever emotion moved him, however, and stretched his thin mouth in a wouldbe amiable grin at the observant Henri.
"You are a sharp boy!" he observed condescendingly--"and tall for your age, no doubt. How old are you?"
"Eleven," replied Henri--"But that has nothing to do with your jumping."
"True," and the secretary wriggled in his chair, pretending to be much amused--"But my jumping had nothing to do with you either, my small friend! I had a thought,--a sudden thought,--of a duty forgotten."
"Oh, it was a thought, was it?" and Henri looked incredulous. "Do thoughts always make you jump?"
"Tais-toi! Tais-toi!" murmured Patoux gently, between two whiffs of his pipe--"Excuse him, Monsieur Cazeau,--he is but a child."
Cazeau writhed amicably.
"A delightful child," he murmured--"And the little girl--his sister- -is also charming--Ah, what fine dark eyes!--what hair! Will she not come and speak to me?"
He held out a hand invitingly towards Babette, but she merely made a grimace at him and retired backwards. Patoux smiled benevolently.
"She does not like strangers," he explained.
"Good--very good! That is right! Little girls should always run away from strangers, especially strangers of my sex," observed Cazeau with a sniggering laugh--"And do these dear children go to school?"
Patoux took his pipe out of his mouth altogether, and stared solemnly at the ceiling.
"Without doubt!--they are compelled to go to school," he answered slowly; "but if I could have had my way, they should never have gone. They learn mischief there in plenty, but no good that I can see. They know much about geography, and the stars, and anatomy, and what they call physical sciences;--but whether they have got it into their heads that the good God wants them to live straight, clean, honest, wholesome lives, is more than I am certain of. However, I trust Pere Laurent will do what he can."
"Pere Laurent?" echoed Cazeau, with a wide smile--"You have a high opinion of Pere Laurent? Ah, yes, a good man!--but ignorant--alas! very ignorant!"
Papa Patoux brought his eyes down from the ceiling and fixed them enquiringly on Cazeau.
"Ignorant?" he began, when at this juncture Madame Patoux entered, and taking possession of Henri and Babette, informed Monsieur Cazeau that the Archbishop would be for some time engaged in conversation with Cardinal Bonpre, and that therefore he, Monsieur Cazeau, need not wait,--Monseigneur would return to his house alone. Whereupon the secretary rose, evidently glad to be set at liberty, and took his leave of the Patoux family. On the threshold, however, he paused, looking back somewhat frowningly at Jean Patoux himself.
"I should not, if I were you, trouble Monseigneur concerning the case you told me of--that of--of Marguerite Valmond,"--he observed-- "He has a horror of evil women."
With that he departed, walking across the Square towards the Archbishop's house in a stealthy sort of fashion, as though he were a burglar meditating some particularly daring robbery.
"He is a rat--a rat!" exclaimed Henri, suddenly executing a sort of reasonless war-dance round the kitchen--"One wants a cat to catch him!"
"Rats are nice," declared Babette, for she remembered having once had a tame white rat which sat on her knee and took food from her hand,--"Monsieur Cazeau is a man; and men are not nice."
Patoux burst into a loud laugh.
"Men are not nice!" he echoed--"What dost thou know about it, thou little droll one?"
"What I see," responded Babette severely, with an elderly air, as of a person who has suffered by bitter experience; and, undeterred by her parents' continued laughter she went on--
"Men are ugly. They are dirty. They say 'Come here my little girl, and I will give you something,'--then when I go to them they try and kiss me. And I will not kiss them, because their mouths smell bad. They stroke my hair and pull it all the wrong way. And it hurts. And when I don't like my hair pulled the wrong way, they tell me I will be a great coquette. A coquette is to be like Diane de Poitiers. Shall I be like Diane de Poitiers?"
"The saints forbid!" cried Madame Patoux,--"And talk no more nonsense, child,--it's bed-time. Come,--say good-night to thy father, Henri;--give them thy blessing, Jean--and let me get them into their beds before the Archbishop leaves the house, or they will be asking him as many questions as there are in the catechism."
Thus enjoined, Papa Patoux kissed his children affectionately, signing the cross on their brows as they came up to him in turn, after the fashion of his own father, who had continued this custom up to his dying day. What they thought of the benediction in itself might be somewhat difficult to define, but it can be safely asserted that a passion of tears on the part of Babette, and a fit of demoniacal howling from Henri, would have been the inevitable result if Papa Patoux had refused to bestow it on them. Whether there were virtue in it or not, their father's mute blessing sent them to bed peaceably and in good humour with each other, and they trotted off very contentedly beside their mother, hushing their footsteps and lowering their voices as they passed the door of the room occupied by Cardinal Bonpre.
"The Archbishop is not an angel, is he?" asked Babette whisperingly.
Her mother smiled broadly.
"Not exactly, my little one. Why such a foolish question?"
"You said that Cardinal Bonpre was a saint, and that perhaps we should see an angel come down from heaven to visit him," replied Babette.
"Well, you could not have thought the Archbishop came from heaven," interpolated Henri, scornfully,--"He came from his own house over the way with his own secretary behind him. Do angels keep secretaries?"
Babette laughed aloud,--the idea was grotesque. The two children were just then ascending the wooden stairs to their bedroom, the mother carrying a lighted candle behind them, and at that moment the rich sonorous voice of the Archbishop, raised to a high and somewhat indignant tone, reached them with these words--"I consider that you altogether mistake your calling and position."
Then the voice died away into inaudible murmurings.
"They are quarrelling! The Archbishop is angry!" said Henri with a grin.
"Perhaps Archbishops do not like saints," suggested Babette.
"Tais-toi! Cardinal Bonpre is an archbishop himself, little silly," said Madame Patoux--"Therefore those great and distinguished Monseigneurs are like brothers."
"That is why they are quarrelling!" declared Henri glibly,--"A boy told me in school that Cain and Abel were the first pair of brothers, and they quarrelled,--and all brothers have quarrelled ever since. It's in the blood, so that boy says,--and it is his excuse always for fighting HIS little brother. His little brother is six, and he is twelve;--and of course he always knocks his little brother down. He cannot help it, he says. And he gets books on physiology and heredity, and he learns in them that whatever is IN the blood has got to come out somehow. He says that it's because Cain killed Abel that there are wars between nations;--if Cain and Abel had never quarrelled, there would never have been any fighting in the world,--and now that it's in the blood of every body--"
But further sapient discourse on the part of Henri was summarily put an end to by his mother's ordering him to kneel down and say his prayers, and afterwards bundling him into bed,--where, being sleepy, he speedily forgot all that he had been trying to talk about. Babette took more time in retiring to rest. She had very pretty, curly, brown hair, and Madame Patoux took a pride in brushing and plaiting it neatly.
"I may be like Diane de Poitiers after all," she remarked, peering at herself in the small mirror when her thick locks were smoothed and tied back for the night--"Why should I not be?"
"Because Diane de Poitiers was a wicked woman," said Madame Patoux energetically,--"and thou must learn to be a good girl."
"But if Diane de Poitiers was bad, why do they talk so much about her even now, and put her in all the histories, and show her house, and say she was beautiful?" went on Babette.
"Because people are foolish," said Madame, getting impatient-- "Foolish people run after bad women, and bad women run after foolish people. Now say thy prayers."
Obediently Babette knelt down, shut her eyes close, clasped her hands hard, and murmured the usual evening formula, heaving a small sigh after her "act of contrition," and looking almost saintly as she commended herself to her "angel guardian." Then her mother kissed her, saying--
"Good-night, little daughter! Think of Our Lady and the saints, and then ask them to keep us safe from evil. Good-night!"
"Good-night." responded Babette sleepily,--but all the same she did not think of Our Lady and the saints half as much as of Diane de Poitiers. There are few daughters of Eve to whom conquest does not seem a finer thing than humility; and the sovereignty of Diane de Poitiers over a king, seems to many a girl just conscious of her own charm, a more emphatic testimony to the supremacy of her sex, than the Angel's greeting of "Blessed art thou!" to the elected Virgin of the world.
III.
Meanwhile a somewhat embarrassing interview had taken place between the Archbishop of Rouen and Cardinal Bonpre. The archbishop, seen by the light of the one small lamp which illumined the "best room" of the Hotel Poitiers was certainly a handsome and imposing personage, broad-chested and muscular, with a massive head, well set on strong square shoulders, admirably adapted for the wearing of the dark violet soutane which fitted them as gracefully as a royal vesture draping the figure of a king. One disproportionate point, however, about his attire was, that the heavy gold crucifix which depended by a chain from his neck, did not, with him, look so much a sacred symbol as a trivial ornament,--whereas the simple silver one that gleamed against the rusty black scarlet-edged cassock of Cardinal Bonpre, presented itself as the plain and significant sign of holiness without the aid of jewellers' workmanship to emphasize its meaning. This was a trifle, no doubt;--still it was one of those slight things which often betray character. As the most brilliant diamond will look like common glass on the rough red hand of a cook, while common glass will simulate the richness of the real gem on the delicate white finger of a daintily-bred woman, so the emblem of salvation seemed a mere bauble and toy on the breast of the Archbishop, while it assumed its most reverent and sacred aspect as worn by Felix Bonpre. Yet judged by mere outward appearance, there could be no doubt as to which was the finer-looking man of the two. The Cardinal, thin and pale, with shadows of thought and pain in his eyes, and the many delicate wrinkles of advancing age marking his features, would never possess so much attractiveness for worldly and superficial persons as the handsome Archbishop, who carried his fifty-five years as though they were but thirty, and whose fresh, plump face, unmarred by any serious consideration, bespoke a thorough enjoyment of life, and the things which life,--if encouraged to demand them,--most strenuously seeks, such as good food, soft beds, rich clothing, and other countless luxuries which are not necessities by any means, but which make the hours move smoothly and softly, undisturbed by the clash of outside events among those who are busy with thoughts and actions, and who,--being absorbed in the thick of a soul-contest,--care little whether their bodies fare ill or well. The Archbishop certainly did not belong to this latter class,--indeed he considered too much thought as mischievous in itself, and when thought appeared likely to break forth into action, he denounced it as pernicious and well-nigh criminal.
"Thinkers," he said once to a young and ardent novice, studying for the priesthood, "are generally socialists and revolutionists. They are an offence to the Church and a danger to the community."
"Surely," murmured the novice timidly,--"Our Lord Himself was a thinker? And a Socialist likewise?"
But at this the Archbishop rose up in wrath and flashed forth menace;--
"If you are a follower of Renan, sir, you had better admit it before proceeding further in your studies," he said irately,--"The Church is too much troubled in these days by the members of a useless and degenerate apostasy!" Whereupon the young man had left his presence abashed, puzzled, and humiliated; but scarcely penitent, inasmuch as his New Testament taught him that he was right and that the Archbishop was wrong.
Truth to tell, the Archbishop was very often wrong. Wrapped up in himself and his own fixed notions as to how life should be lived, he seldom looked out upon the larger world, and obstinately refused to take any thoughtful notice of the general tendency of public opinion in all countries concerning religion and morality. All that he was unable to explain, he flatly denied,--and his prejudices were as violent as his hatred of contradiction was keen. The saintly life and noble deeds of Felix Bonpre had reached him from time to time through various rumours repeated by different priests and dignitaries of the Church, who had travelled as far as the distant little Cathedral-town embowered among towering pines and elm trees, where the Cardinal had his abiding seat of duty;--and he had been anxious to meet the man who in these days of fastidious feeding and luxurious living, had managed to gain such a holy reputation as to be almost canonized in some folks' estimation before he was dead. Hearing that Bonpre intended to stay a couple of nights in Rouen, he cordially invited him to spend that time at his house,--but the invitation had been gratefully yet firmly refused, much to the Archbishop's amazement. This amazement increased considerably when he learned that the dingy, comfortless, little Hotel Poitiers had been selected by the Cardinal as his temporary lodging,--and it was not without a pious murmur concerning "the pride which apes humility" that he betook himself to that ancient and despised hostelry, which had nothing whatever in the way of a modern advantage to recommend it,--neither electric light, nor electric bell, nor telephone. But he felt it incumbent upon him to pay a fraternal visit to the Cardinal, who had become in a manner famous without being at all aware of his fame,--and when finally in his presence, he was conscious not only of a singular disappointment, but an equally singular perplexity. Felix Bonpre was not at all the sort of personage he had expected to see. He had imagined that a Churchman who was able to obtain a character for saintliness in days like these, must needs be worldly-wise and crafty, with a keen perception and comprehension of the follies of mankind, and an ability to use these follies advantageously to further his own ends. Something of the cunning and foresight of an ancient Egyptian sorcerer was in the composition of the Archbishop himself, for he judged mankind alone by its general stupidity and credulity;-- stupidity and credulity which formed excellent ground for the working of miracles, whether such miracles were wrought in the name of Osiris or Christ. Mokanna, the "Veiled Prophet," while corrupt to the core with unnameable vices, had managed in his time to delude the people into thinking him a holy man; and,--without any adequate reason for his assumption,--the Archbishop had certainly prepared himself to meet in Felix Bonpre, a shrewd, calculating, clever priest, absorbed in acting the part of an excessive holiness in order to secure such honour in his diocese as should attract the particular notice of the Vatican. "Playing for Pope," in fact, had been the idea with which the archbishop had invested the Cardinal's reputed sanctity, and he was astonished and in a manner irritated to find himself completely mistaken. He had opened the conversation by the usual cordial trivialities of ordinary greeting, to which Bonpre had responded with the suave courtesy and refined gentleness which always dignified his manner,--and then the Archbishop had ventured to offer a remonstrance on the unconventional--"Shall we call it eccentric?" he suggested, smiling amicably,--conduct of the Cardinal in choosing to abide in such a comfortless lodging as the Hotel Poitiers.
"It would have been a pleasure and an honour to me to welcome you at my house"--he said--"Really, it is quite a violation of custom and usage that you should be in this wretched place; the accommodation is not at all fitted for a prince of the Church."
Cardinal Felix raised one hand in gentle yet pained protest.
"Pardon me!" he said, "I do not like that term, 'prince of the Church.' There are no princes in the Church--or if there are, there should be none."
The archbishop opened his eyes widely.
"That is a strange remark!" he ejaculated--"Princes of the Church there have always been since Cardinals were created; and you, being a Cardinal and an Archbishop as well, cannot be otherwise than one of them."
Felix Bonpre sighed.
"Still, I maintain that the term is a wrong one," he answered, "and used in the wrong place. The Church has nothing, or should have nothing to do with differing titles or places. The ordinary priest who toils among his congregation day and night, scarcely resting himself, working and praying for the spiritual welfare of others, should to my thinking be as greatly held in honour as the bishop who commands him and who often--so it chances--is able to do less for our Lord than he. In things temporal, owing to the constant injustice of man practised against his brother-man, we can seldom attain to strict impartiality of judgment,--but in things spiritual, there surely should be perfect equality."
"Seriously speaking, are those your views?" enquired the Archbishop, his features expressing more and more astonishment.
"Assuredly!" responded the Cardinal gently,--"Are they not yours? Did not the Master Himself say 'Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant'? And 'Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased'? These statements are plain and true,--there is no mistaking them."
The Archbishop was silent for a minute or so.
"Unfortunately we cannot apply our Lord's words literally to everyday exigencies," he murmured suavely--"If we could do so--"
"We SHOULD do so," said the Cardinal with emphasis--"The outside world may be disinclined to do so,--but we--we who are the representatives of a God-given faith, are solemnly bound to do so. And I fear--I very much fear--that it is because in many cases we have not shown the example expected of us, that heresy and atheism are so common among the people of the present day."
"Are you a would-be reformer?" asked the Archbishop good-humouredly, yet not without a touch of satire in his tone,--"If so, you are not alone--there have already been many!"
"Nay, I desire no reforms," responded the Cardinal, a faint flush warming the habitual pallor of his cheeks--"I simply wish to maintain--not alter--the doctrine of our Lord. No reform is necessary in that,--it is clear, concise, and simple enough for a child to understand. His command to His disciples was,--'Feed my sheep'--and I have of late been troubled and perplexed, because it seems to me that the sheep are not fed;--that despite churches and teachers and preachers, whole flocks are starving."
The Archbishop moved uneasily in his chair. His habitual violent spirit of contradiction rose up rebelliously in him, and he longed to give a sharp answer in confutation of the Cardinal's words, but there was a touch of the sycophant in his nature despite his personal pride, and he could not but reflect that Cardinals ranked above Archbishops, and that Felix Bonpre was in very truth a "prince of the Church" however much he himself elected to disclaim the title. And as in secular affairs lesser men will always bow the knee to royalty, so the Archbishop felt the necessity of temporising with one who was spiritually royal. Therefore he considered a moment before replying.
"I think," he said at last, in soft persuasive tones, "that your conscience may perhaps be a little tender on this subject. But I cannot agree with you in your supposition that whole flocks are starving;--for Christianity dominates the better and more intellectual part of the civilized world, and through its doctrines, men are gradually learning to be more tolerant and less unjust. When we recollect the barbarous condition of humanity before the coming of Christ--"
"Barbarous?" interrupted the Cardinal with half a smile,--"You would hardly apply that term to the luxury-loving peoples of Tyre and Babylon?--or to the ancient splendours of Athens and Rome?"
"They were heathens," said the Archbishop sententiously.
"But they were men and women," replied Bonpre, "And they too had immortal souls. They were all more or less struggling towards the fundamental Idea of good. Of course then, as now that Idea was overgrown by superstitious myths and observances--but the working tendency of the whole universe being ever towards Good, not Evil, an impulse to press on in the right direction was always in the brain of man, no matter how dimly felt. Primitive notions of honour were strange indeed; nevertheless honour existed in the minds of the early barbarians in a vague sense, though distorted out of shape and noblest meaning. No,--we dare not take upon ourselves to assert that men were altogether barbarous before the coming of Christ. They were cruel and unjust certainly,--and alas! they are cruel and unjust still! Eighteen hundred years of Christian teaching have not eradicated these ingrained sins from any one unit of the entire mass."
"You are a severe judge!" said the Archbishop.
Cardinal Bonpre lifted his mild blue eyes protestingly.
"Severe? I? God forbid that I should be severe, or presume to sit in judgment on any poor soul that sought my sympathy! I do not judge,-- I simply feel. And my feelings have for a long time, I confess, been poignantly sorrowful."
"Sorrowful! And why?"
"Because the impression has steadily gained upon me that if our Church were all it was originally intended to be by its Divine Founder, we should at this time have neither heresies or apostasies, and all the world would be gathered into the 'one fold under one Shepherd.' But if we, who are its ministers, persist in occupying ourselves more with 'things temporal' than 'things spiritual,' we fail to perform our mission, or to show the example required of us, and we do not attract, so much as we repel. The very children of the present day are beginning to doubt our calling and election."
"Oh, of course there are, and always have been heretics and atheists," said the Archbishop,--"And apparently there always will be."
"And I venture to maintain that it is our fault that heretics and atheists continue to exist," replied the Cardinal; "If our Divine faith were lived divinely, there would be no room for heresy or atheism. The Church itself supplies the loophole for apostasy."
The Archbishop's handsome face crimsoned.
"You amaze me by such an expression!" he said, raising his voice a little in the indignation he could scarcely conceal--"you talk-- pardon me--as if you yourself were uncertain of the Church's ability to withstand unbelief."
"I speak but as I think," answered the Cardinal gently. And I admit I AM uncertain. In the leading points of reed I am very steadfastly convinced;--namely, that Christ was divine, and that the following of His Gospel is the saving of the immortal soul. But if you ask me whether I think we do truly follow that Gospel, I must own that I have doubts upon the matter."
"An elected favourite son of the Church should surely have no doubts!" said the Archbishop.
"Ah, there you come back to the beginning from which we started, when I ventured to object to your term 'prince of the Church.' According to our Master, all men should be equal before Him; therefore we err in marking differences of rank or favoritism in questions of religion. The very idea of rank is anti-Christian."
At this the Archbishop began to look seriously annoyed.
"I am afraid you are indulging in very unorthodox ideas," he said with impatience--"In fact I consider you altogether mistake your calling and position."
These were the words which had reached the attentive ears of the Patoux children on their way up to bed, and had caused Henri to declare that the Archbishop and the Cardinal were quarrelling. Felix Bonpre took the somewhat violent remark, however, with perfect equanimity.
"Possibly I may do so," he responded peaceably. "We are all subject to error. My calling, as I take it, is that of a servant of Christ, whose instructions for work are plainly set down in His own words. It is for me to follow these instructions as literally and exactly as I can. With regard to my position, I am placed as the spiritual head of a very small diocese, where the people for the most part lead very innocent and harmless lives. But I should be selfish and narrow in spirit if I allowed myself to limit my views to my own circle of influence. My flock are mere rustics in intellectual capacity, and have no conception of the manner in which the larger tide of human events is flowing. Now and then one or two of the people grow weary of their quiet pastures and woodlands,--and being young, hopeful, and ardent, start forth into the great world, there to seek fairer fortunes. Sometimes they come back to their old homes. Far more frequently they never return. But those who do come back are changed utterly. I recognise no more the young men and maidens whom I confirmed in their faith, and laid my hands on in blessing ere they fared forth to other lives and scenes. The men are grown callous and worldly; without a heart,--without a thought,-- save for the gain or loss of gold. The women are--ruined!"
He paused a moment. The Archbishop said nothing.
"I love my people," went on the Cardinal pathetically--"No child is baptised in our old Cathedral without my praying for its future good,--without my hope that it may grow into that exquisite mingling of the Divine and Human which our Lord taught us was the perfection of life, and His desire to see fulfilled in those He called His own. Yes,--I love my people!--and when any of them go away from me, and then return to the scenes of their childhood broken-hearted, I cannot meet them with reproach. My own heart is half broken to see them thus cast down. And their sorrows have compelled me naturally to meditate on the sorrows of others,--to consider what it is in the world which thus corrodes the pure gold of innocence and robs life of its greatest charm. For if Christ's spirit ruled us all, then innocence should be held more sacred. Life should engender happiness. I have studied, read, and thought long, upon these matters, so that I not only feel, but know the truth of what I say. Brother!--" and the Cardinal, strongly moved, rose suddenly and confronted the Archbishop with a passionate gesture--"My great grief is that the spirit of Christ does NOT rule the world! Christ is being re-crucified by this generation! And the Church is looking on, and silently permitting His second murder!"
Startled by the force of this expression, the Archbishop sprang up in his turn, his lips parted as if to speak--then--his angry glance met the clear, calm, steadfast look of Felix Bonpre, and he faltered. His eyes drooped--and his massive figure seemed for a moment to shrink with a sort of abasement. Like an inspired apostle the Cardinal stood, one hand outstretched,--his whole frame sentient with the strong emotion which possessed him.
"You know that what I say is true," he continued in quieter but no less intensely passionate accents--"You know that every day sees our Master crowned with new thorns and exposed to fresh torture! You know that we do nothing!--We stand beside Him in His second agony as dumb as though we were unconscious of it! You know that we MIGHT speak and will not! You know that we fear the ephemera of temporary governments, policies, and social conventionalities, more than the great, real, and terrible judgment of the world to come!"
"But all these things have been said before," began the Archbishop, recovering a little from the confusion that had momentarily seized him,--"And as I just now observed, you should remember that there have always been heretics from the very beginning."
"Oh, I remember!" and the Cardinal sighed, "How is it possible that any of us should forget! Heretics, whom we have tortured with unheard-of agonies and burned in the flames, as a proof of our love and sympathy with the tenderness of Christ Jesus!"
"You are going too far back in time!" said the Archbishop quickly. "We erred in the beginning through excess of zeal, but now--now--"
"Now we do exactly the same thing," returned Bonpre--"Only we do not burn physically our heretics, but morally. We condemn all who oppose us. Good men and brave thinkers, whom in our arrogance we consign to eternal damnation, instead of endeavouring to draw out the heart of their mystery, and gather up the gems of their learning as fresh proofs of the active presence of God's working in, and through all things! Think of the Church's invincible and overpowering obstinacy in the case of Galileo! He declared the existence of God to us by the utterance of a Truth,--inasmuch as every truth is a new message from God. Had he pronounced his theories before our divine Master, that Master would have confirmed, not denied them! Have we one single example of Christ putting to the torture any poor soul that did not believe in Him? Nay--He Himself submitted to be tortured; but for those who wronged Him, His prayer was only--'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO! The ministers of truth should rather suffer themselves than let others suffer. The horrors of the Inquisition are a blot on religious history; our Master never meant us to burn and torture men into faith. He desired us to love and lead them into the way of life as the shepherd leads a flock into the fold. I repeat again, there would have been no room for atheism if we--we--the servants of Christ, had been strictly true to our vocation."
By this time the Archbishop had recovered his equanimity. He sat down and surveyed the up-standing figure of the Cardinal with curiosity and a touch of pity.
"You think too much of these things," he said soothingly--"You are evidently overwrought with study and excessive zeal. Much that you say may be true; nevertheless the Church--OUR Church--stands firm among overwhelming contradictions,--and we, its ministers, do what we can. I myself am disposed to think that the multitude of the saved is greater than the multitude of the lost."
"I envy you the consolation such a thought must give," responded the Cardinal, as he resumed his seat opposite his visitor--"I, on the contrary, have the pained and bitter sense that we are to blame for all this 'multitude of the lost,' or at any rate that we could have done more in the way of rescue than we have done." He paused a moment, passing one hand across his forehead wearily. "In truth this is what has for a long time weighed upon my mind, and depressed my spirits even to the detriment of bodily health. I am nearing the grave, and must soon give an account of my stewardship;--and the knowledge of the increasing growth of evil in the world is almost more than I can bear."
"But you are not to blame," said the Archbishop wonderingly,--"In your own diocese you have fulfilled your duty; more than this is not expected of you. You have done your best for the people you serve,-- and reports of your charities and good works are not lacking--"
"Do not credit such reports," interrupted the Cardinal, almost sternly,--"I have done nothing--absolutely nothing! My life has been too peaceful,--too many undeserved blessings have been bestowed upon me. I much fear that the calm and quiet of my days have rendered me selfish. I think I should long ago have sought some means of engaging in more active duties. I feel as if I should have gone into the thick of the religious contest, and spoken and fought, and helped the sick and wounded of the mental battle,--but now--now it is too late!"
"Nothing is too late for one in your position," said the Archbishop- -"You may yet sit in St. Peter's chair!"
"God forbid!" ejaculated Bonpre fervently--"I would rather die! I have never wished to rule,--I have only sought to help and to comfort. But sixty-eight years of life weigh heavily on the faculties,--I cannot wear the sword and buckler of energetic manhood. I am old--old!--and to a certain extent, incapacitated for useful labour. Hence I almost grudge my halcyon time spent among simple folk,--time made sweet by all the surroundings of Nature's pastoral loveliness;--the sorrow of the wider world knocks at my heart and makes it ache! I feel that I am one of those who stand by, idly watching the Master's second death without one word of protest!"
The archbishop listened in silence. There was a curious shamed look upon his face, as if some secret sin within himself had suddenly been laid bare in all its vileness to the light of day. The golden crucifix he wore moved restlessly with a certain agitated quickness in his breathing, and he did not raise his eyes, when, after a little pause, he said--
"I tell you, as I told you before, that you think too much; you are altogether too sensitive. I admit that at the present day the world is full of terrible heresies and open blasphemy, but this is part of what we are always bound to expect,--we are told that we must 'suffer for righteousness' sake--'"
"We!" said the Cardinal--"Yes, WE! that is, OURSELVES;--the Church-- WE think, when we hear of heresies and blasphemies that it is we who are 'suffering for righteousness' sake,' but in our egotism we forget that WE are not suffering at all if we are able to retain our faith! It is the very heretics and blasphemers whom we condemn that are suffering--suffering absolute tortures--perchance 'for righteousness' sake'!"
"Dare we call a heretic 'righteous'?" enquired the Archbishop--"Is he not, in his very heresy, accursed?"
"According to our Lord, no one is accursed save traitors,--that is to say those who are not true. If a man doubts, it is better he should admit his doubt than make a pretence of belief. The persons whom we call heretics may have their conception of the truth,--they may say that they cannot accept a creed which is so ignorant of its own tenets as to condemn all those who do not follow it,--inasmuch as the very Founder of it distinctly says--'If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.' Now we, His followers, judge, but do not save. The atheist is judged by us, but not rescued from his unbelief; the thinker is condemned,--the scientist who reveals the beauty and wisdom of God as made manifest in the composition of the lightning, or the germinating of a flower, is accused of destroying religion. And we continue to pass our opinion, and thunder our vetoes and bans of excommunication against our fellowmen, in the full front of the plain command 'Judge not, that ye be not judged'!"
"I see it is no use arguing with you," said the Archbishop, forcing a smile, with a vexation the smile could not altogether conceal,-- "You are determined to take these sayings absolutely,--and to fret your spirit over the non-performance of imaginary duties which do not exist. This Church is a system,--founded on our Lord's teaching, but applied to the needs of modern civilization. It is not humanly possible to literally obey all Christ's commands."
"For the outside world I grant it may be difficult,--but for the ministers of religion, however difficult it may be, it should be done," replied the Cardinal firmly. "I said this before, and I deliberately maintain it. The Church IS a system,--but whether it is as much founded on the teaching of our Lord, who was divine, as on the teaching of St. Paul, who was NOT divine, is a question to me of much perplexity."
"St. Paul was directly inspired by our Lord," said the Archbishop-- "I am amazed that you should even hint a doubt of his apostleship!"
"I do not decry St. Paul," answered Bonpre quietly--"He was a gifted and clever man, but he was a Man--he was not God-in-Man. Christ's doctrine leaves no place for differing sects; St. Paul's method of applying that doctrine serves as authority for the establishment of any and every quarrelsome sect ever known!"
"I cannot agree with you," said the Archbishop coldly.
"I do not expect to be agreed with"--and Bonpre smiled a little--"An opinion which excites no opposition at all is not worth having! I am quite honest in my scruples, such as they are;--I do not think we fit, as you say, the Church system to the needs of modern civilization. On the contrary, we must fail in many ways to do this, else there would not be such a crying out for help and comfort as there is at present among all Christian peoples. We no longer speak with a grand certainty as we ought to do. We only offer vague hopes and dubious promises to those who thirst for the living waters of salvation and immortality,--it is as if we did not feel sure enough of God ourselves to make others sure. All this is wrong--wrong! It forebodes heavy punishment and disaster. If I were younger, I could express perhaps my meaning more clearly,--but as it is, my soul is weighted with unutterable thoughts,--I would almost call them warnings,--of some threatening evil; . . . and today--only this afternoon--when I sat for an hour in the Cathedral yonder and listened to the music of the great organ--"
The Archbishop started.
"What did you say?"
The Cardinal repeated his words gently,--
"I said that I sat in the Cathedral and listened to the music of the great organ--"
"The great organ!" interrupted the Archbishop,--"You must have been dreaming! You could not possibly have heard the great organ,--it is old and all out of gear;--it is never used. The only one we have for service just now is a much smaller instrument in the left-hand choir-chapel,--but no person could have played even on that without the key. And the key was unobtainable, as the organist is absent from the town to-day."
The Cardinal looked completely bewildered.
"Are you quite sure of this?" he asked falteringly.
"Sure--absolutely sure!" declared the Archbishop with a smile--"No doubt you thought you heard music; overwrought nerves often play these tricks upon us. And it is owing to this same cause that you are weary and dispirited, and that you take such a gloomy view of the social and religious outlook. You are evidently out of health and unstrung;--but after you have had sufficient rest and change, you will see things in quite a different aspect. I will not for a moment believe that you could possibly be as unorthodox as your conversation would imply,--it would be a total misconception of your true character," and the Archbishop laughed softly. "A total misconception," he repeated,--"Why, yes, of course it would be! No Cardinal-Archbishop of Holy Mother Church could bring such accusations against its ministry as you would have suggested, unless he were afflicted by nervous depression, which, as we all know, has the uncomfortable effect of creating darkness even where all is light. Do you stay long in Rouen?"
"No," replied the Cardinal abstractedly, answering the question mechanically though his thoughts were far away--"I leave for Paris to-morrow."
"For Paris? And then?"
"I go to Rome with my niece, Angela Sovrani,--she is in Paris awaiting my arrival now."
"Ah! You must be very proud of your niece!" murmured the Archbishop softly--"She is famous everywhere,--a great artist!--a wonderful genius!"
"Angela paints well--yes," said the Cardinal quietly,--"But she has still a great deal to learn. And she is unfortunately much more alone now than she used to be,--her mother's death last year was a terrible blow to her."
"Her mother was your sister?"
"My only sister," answered the Cardinal--"A good, sweet woman!--may her soul rest in peace! Her character was never spoilt by the social life she was compelled to lead. My brother-in-law, Prince Sovrani, kept open house,--and all the gay world of Rome was accustomed to flock thither; but now--since he has lost his wife, things have changed very much,--sadness has taken the place of mirth,--and Angela is very solitary."
"Is she not affianced to the celebrated Florian Varillo?"
A fleeting shadow of pain darkened the Cardinal's clear eyes.
"Yes. But she sees very little of him,--you know the strictness of Roman etiquette in such matters. She sees little--and sometimes--so I think--knows less. However, I hope all will be well. But my niece is over sensitive, brilliantly endowed, and ambitious,--at times I have fears for her future."
"Depression again!" declared the Archbishop, rising and preparing to take his leave--"Believe me, the world is full of excellence when we look upon it with clear eyes;--things are never as bad as they seem. To my thinking, you are the last man alive who should indulge in melancholy forebodings. You have led a peaceful and happy life, graced with the reputation of many good deeds, and you are generally beloved by the people of whom you have charge. Then, though celibacy is your appointed lot, heaven has given you a niece as dear to you as any child of your own could be, who has won a pre-eminent place among the world's great artists, and is moreover endowed with beauty and distinction. What more can you desire?"
He smiled expansively as he spoke; the Cardinal looked at him steadfastly.
"I desire nothing!" he answered--"I never have desired anything! I told you before that I consider I have received many more blessings than I deserve. It is not any personal grief which at present troubles me,--it is something beyond myself. It is a sense of wrong,--an appeal for truth,--a cry from those who are lost in the world,--the lost whom the Church might have saved!"
"Merely fancy!" said the Archbishop cheerily--"Like the music in the Cathedral! Do not permit your imagination to get the better of you in such matters! When you return from Rome, I shall be glad to see you if you happen to come through Normandy on your way back to your own people. I trust you will so far honour me?"
"I know nothing of my future movements," answered the Cardinal gently,--"But if I should again visit Rouen, I will certainly let you know, and will, if you desire it, accept your friendly hospitality."
With this, the two dignitaries shook hands and the Archbishop took his leave. As he picked his way carefully down the rough stairs and along the dingy little passage of the Hotel Poitiers, he was met by Jean Patoux holding a lighted candle above his head to show him the way.
"It is dark, Monseigneur," said Patoux apologetically.
"It is very dark," agreed Monseigneur, stumbling as he spoke, and feeling rather inclined to indulge in very uncanonical language. "It is altogether a miserable hole, mon Patoux!"
"It is for poor people only," returned Jean calmly--"And poverty is not a crime, Monseigneur."
"No, it is not a crime," said the stately Churchman as he reached the door at last, and paused for a moment on the threshold,--a broad smile wrinkling up his fat cheeks and making comfortable creases round his small eyes--"But it is an inconvenience!"
"Cardinal Bonpre does not say so," observed Patoux.
"Cardinal Bonpre is one of two things--a saint or a fool! Remember that, mon Patoux! Bon soir! Benedicite!"
And the Archbishop, still smiling to himself, walked leisurely across the square in the direction of his own house, where his supper awaited him. The moon had risen, and was clambering slowly up between the two tall towers of Notre Dame, her pure silver radiance streaming mockingly against the candle Jean Patoux still held in the doorway of his inn, and almost extinguishing its flame.
"One of two things--a saint or a fool," murmured Jean with a chuckle--"Well!--it is very certain that the Archbishop is neither!"
He turned in, and shut his door as far as it would allow him to do so, and went comfortably to bed, where Madame had gone before him. And throughout the Hotel Poitiers deep peace and silence reigned. Every one in the house slept, save Cardinal Bonpre, who with the Testament before him, sat reading and meditating deeply for an hour before retiring to rest. A fresh cause of anxiety had come upon him in the idea that perhaps his slight indisposition was more serious than he had deemed. If, as the Archbishop had said, there could have been no music possible in the Cathedral that afternoon, how came it that he had heard such solemn and entrancing harmonies? Was his mind affected? Was he in truth imagining what did not exist? Were the griefs of the world his own distorted view of things? Did the Church faithfully follow the beautiful and perfect teachings of Christ after all? He tried to reason the question out from a different and more hopeful standpoint, but vainly;--the conviction that Christianity was by no means the supreme regenerating force, or the vivifying Principle of Human Life which it was originally meant to be, was borne in upon him with increasing certainty, and the more he read the Gospels, the more he became aware that the Church--system as it existed was utterly opposed to Christ's own command, and moreover was drifting further and further away from Him with every passing year.
"The music in the Cathedral may have been my fancy," he said,--"But the discord in the world sounds clear and is NOT imagination. A casuist in religion may say 'It was to be';--that heresies and dissensions were prophesied by Christ, when He said 'Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall grow cold';--but this does not excuse the Church from the sin of neglect, if any neglects exists. One thing we have never seemed to thoroughly understand, and this is that Christ's teaching is God's teaching, and that it has not stopped with the enunciation of the Gospel. It is going on even now--in every fresh discovery of science,--in every new national experience,--in everything we can do, or think, or plan, the Divine instruction steadily continues through the Divine influence imparted to us when the Godhead became man, to show men how they might in turn become gods. This is what we forget and what we are always forgetting; so that instead of accepting every truth, we quarrel with it and reject it, even as Judaea rejected Christ Himself. It is very strange and cruel;--and the world's religious perplexities are neither to be wondered at nor blamed,--there is just and grave cause for their continuance and increase."
He closed the Testament, and being thoroughly fatigued in body as well as mind, he at last retired. Lying down contentedly upon the hard and narrow bed which was the best the inn provided, he murmured his usual prayer,--"If this should be the sleep of death, Jesus receive my soul!"--and remained for a little while with his eyes open, looking at the white glory of the moonlight as it poured through his lattice window and formed delicate traceries of silver luminance on the bare wooden floor. He could just see the dark towers of Notre Dame from where he lay,--a black mass in the moonbeams--a monument of half-forgotten history--a dream of centuries, hallowed or blasphemed by the prayers and aspirations of dead and gone multitudes who had appealed to the incarnate God-inMan before its altars. God-in-Man had been made manifest!--how long would, the world have to wait before Man-in-God was equally created and declared? For that was evidently intended to be the final triumph of the Christian creed.
"We should have gained such a victory long ago," mused Cardinal Bonpre--"only that we ourselves have set up stumbling-blocks, and rejected God at every step of the way."
Closing his eyes he soon slept; the rays of the moon fell upon his pale face and silvery hair like a visible radiant benediction,--and the bells of the city chimed the hours loudly and softly, clanging in every direction, without waking him from his rest. But slumbering as he was, he had no peace,--for in his sleep he was troubled by a strange vision.
IV.
As the terrors of imagined suffering are always worse than actual pain, so dreams are frequently more vivid than the reality of life,- -that is we are sure that life is indeed reality, and not itself a dream within a dream. Cardinal Bonpre's sleep was not often disturbed by affrighting visions,--his methods of daily living were too healthy and simple, and his conscience too clear;--but on this particular night he was visited by an impression rather than a dream,--the impression of a lonely, and terrifying dreariness, as though the whole world were suddenly emptied of life and left like a hollow shell on the shores of time. Gradually this first sense of utter and unspeakable loss changed into a startled consciousness of fear;--some awful transformation of things familiar was about to be consummated;--and he felt the distinct approach of some unnameable Horror which was about to convulse and overwhelm all mankind. Then in his dream, a great mist rose up before his eyes,--a mingling as of sea-fog and sun-flame,--and as this in turn slowly cleared,-- dispersing itself in serpentine coils of golden-grey vapour,--he found himself standing on the edge of a vast sea, glittering in a light that was neither of earth nor of heaven, but that seemed to be the inward reflection of millions of flashing sword blades. And as he stood gazing across the width of the waters, the sky above him grew black, and a huge ring of fire rose out of the east, instead of the beloved and familiar sun,--fire that spread itself in belching torrents of flame upward and downward, and began to absorb in its devouring heat the very sea. Then came a sound of many thunders, mingled with the roar of rising waters and the turbulence of a great whirlwind,--and out of the whirlwind came a Voice saying--"Now is the end of all things on the earth,--and the whole world shall be burnt up as a dead leaf in a sudden flame! And we will create from out its ashes new heavens and a new earth, and we will call forth new beings wherewith to people the fairness of our fresh creation,-- for the present generation of mankind hath rejected God,--and God henceforth rejecteth His faithless and unworthy creatures! Wherefore let now this one dim light amid the thousand million brighter lights be quenched,--let the planet known to all angels as the Sorrowful Star fall from its sphere forever,--let the Sun that hath given it warmth and nourishment be now its chief Destroyer, and let everything that hath life within it, perish utterly and revive no more!"
And Cardinal Felix heard these words of doom. Powerless to move or speak, he stood watching the terrible circle of fire, extend and expand, till all the visible universe seemed melting in one red furnace of flame;--and in himself he felt no hope,--no chance of rescue;--in himself he knew that the appalling work of destruction was being accomplished with a deadly swiftness that left no time for lamentation,--that the nations of the world were as flying straws swept into the burning, without space or moment for a parting prayer or groan. Tortured by an excruciating agony too great for tears, he suddenly found voice, and lifting his face towards the lurid sky he cried aloud--
"God of Eternity, stay Thy hand! For one remaining Cause be merciful! Doom not Thy creature Man to utter destruction!--but still remember that Thou wast born even as he! As helpless, as wronged, as tempted, as betrayed, as suffering, as prone to pain and death! Thou hast lived his life and endured his sorrows, though in the perfect glory of Thy Godhead Thou hast not sinned! Have patience yet, oh Thou great Splendour of all worlds! Have patience yet, Thou outraged and blasphemed Creator! Break once again Thy silence as of old and speak to us!--pity us once again ere Thou slay us utterly,--come to us even as Thou earnest in Judaea, and surely we will receive Thee and obey Thee, and reject Thy love no more!"
As he thus prayed he was seized with a paralysing fear,--for suddenly the red and glowing chaos of fire above him changed into soft skies tinged with the exquisite pearl-grey hues of twilight, and he became conscious of the approach of a great invisible Presence, whose awful unseen beauty overwhelmed him with its sublimity and majesty, causing him to forget altogether that he himself existed. And Someone spoke,--in grave sweet accents, so soft and close to him that the words seemed almost whispered in his ears,--
"Thy prayer is heard,--and once again the silence shall be broken. Nevertheless remember that 'the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not'."
Deep silence followed. The mysterious Presence melted as it were into space,--and the Cardinal awoke, trembling violently and bathed in a cold perspiration. He gazed bewilderedly around him, his mind still confused and dazzled by the strong visionary impression of the burning heavens and sea,--and he could not for a moment realize where he was. Then, after a while, he recognised the humble furniture of the room he occupied, and through the diamond-shaped panes of the little lattice window, perceived the towers of Notre Dame, now gleaming with a kind of rusty silver in the broader radiance of the fully uplifted moon.
"It was a dream," he murmured,--"A dream of the end of the world!" He shuddered a little as he thought of the doom pronounced upon the earth,--the planet "known to all angels as the Sorrowful Star"--"Let the Sun that hath given it warmth and nourishment be now its chief Destroyer."
According to modern scientists, such was indeed the precise way in which the world was destined to come to an end. And could anything be more terrifying than the thought that the glorious Orb, the maker of day and generator of all beauty, should be destined to hurl from its shining centre death and destruction upon the planet it had from creation vivified and warmed! The Vision had shown the devastating ring of fire rising from that very quarter of the heavens where the sun should have been radiantly beaming,--and as Felix Bonpre dwelt upon the picture in his mind, and remembered his own wild prayer to the Eternal, a great uneasiness and dread overwhelmed him.
"God's laws can never be altered;" he said aloud--"Every evil deed brings its own punishment; and if the world's wickedness becomes too great an offence in the eyes of the Almighty, it follows that the world must be destroyed. What am I that I should pray against Divine Justice! For truly we have had our chance of rescue and salvation;-- the Way,--the Truth,--and the Life have been given to us through Christ our Redeemer; and if we reject Him, we reject all, and we have but ourselves to blame."
At that moment a plaintive wailing, as of some human creature in distress broke on his ears through the deep silence of the night. He listened attentively, and the sorrowful sound was repeated,--a desolate yet gentle cry as of some sick and suffering child. Moved by a sudden impulse the Cardinal rose, and going to the window looked anxiously out, and down into the street below. Not a living creature was to be seen. The moonlight spread itself in a vast silver glory over the whole width of the square, and the delicate sculpture of the great rose-window of the Cathedral, centrally suspended between the two tall towers, looked in the fine pale radiance like a giant spider's web sparkling with fairy dew. Again-- again!--that weary sobbing cry! It went to the Cardinal's heart, and stirred him to singular pain and pity.
"Surely it is some lost or starving creature," he said--"Some poor soul seeking comfort in a comfortless world." Hastily throwing on his garments he left his room, treading cautiously in order not to disturb the sleeping household,--and feeling his way down the short, dark staircase, he easily reached the door and passed noiselessly out into the square. Walking a few steps hurriedly he paused, once more listening. The night was intensely calm;--not a cloud crossed the star-spangled violet dome of air wherein the moon soared serenely, bathing all visible things in a crystalline brilliancy so pure and penetrative, that the finest cuttings on the gigantic grey facade of Notre Dame could be discerned and outlined as distinctly as though every little portion were seen through a magnifying glass. The Cardinal's tall attenuated figure, standing alone and almost in the centre of the square, cast a long thin black shadow on the glistening grey stones,--and his dream-impression of an empty world came back forcibly upon him,--a world as empty as a hollow shell! Houses there were around him, and streets, and a noble edifice consecrated to the worship of God,--nevertheless there was a sense of absolute desertion in and through all. Was not the Cathedral itself the mere husk of a religion? The seed had dropped out and sunk into the soil,--"among thorns" and "stony places" indeed,--and some "by the wayside" to be devoured by birds of prey. Darker and heavier grew the cloud of depression on the Cardinal's soul,--and more and more passionate became the protest which had for a long time been clamouring in him for utterance,--the protest of a Churchman against the Church he served! It was terrible,--and to a "prince of the Roman Church" hideous and unnatural; nevertheless the protest existed, and it had in some unaccountable way grown to be more a part of him than he himself realized.
"The world is empty because God is leaving it," he said, sorrowfully raising his eyes to the tranquil heavens,--"and the joy of existence is departing because the Divine and Holy Spirit of things is being withdrawn!"
He moved on a few paces,--and once more through the deep stillness the little sobbing cry of sorrow was wafted tremulously to his ears. It came or seemed to come from the Cathedral, and quickening his steps he went thither. The deeply hollowed portal, full of black shadows, at first showed nothing but its own massively sculptured outlines--then--all at once the Cardinal perceived standing within the embrasured darkness, the slight shrinking figure of a child. A boy's desolate little figure,--with uplifted hands clasped appealingly and laid against the shut Cathedral door, and face hidden and pressed hard upon those hands, as though in mute and inconsolable despair. As the Cardinal softly drew nearer, a long shuddering sigh from the solitary little creature moved his heart anew to pity, and speaking in accents of the utmost gentleness he said--
"My poor child, what troubles you? Why are you here all alone, and weeping at this late hour? Have you no home?--no parents?"
Slowly the boy turned round, still resting his small delicate hands against the oaken door of the Cathedral, and with the tears yet wet upon his cheeks, smiled. What a sad face he had!--worn and weary, yet beautiful!--what eyes, heavy with the dews of sorrow, yet tender even in pain! Startled by the mingled purity and grief of so young a countenance, the Cardinal retreated for a moment in amaze,--then approaching more closely he repeated his former question with increased interest and tenderness--
"Why are you weeping here alone?"
"Because I am left alone to weep," said the boy, answering in a soft voice of vibrating and musical melancholy--"For me, the world is empty."
An empty world! His dream-impression of universal desolation and desertion came suddenly back upon the prelate's mind, and a sudden trembling seized him, though he could discover in himself no cause for fear. Anxiously he surveyed the strange and solitary little wayfarer on the threshold of the Cathedral, and while he thus looked, the boy said wistfully--
"I should have rested here within, but it is closed against me."
"The doors are always locked at night, my child," returned the Cardinal, recovering from his momentary stupor and bewilderment, "But I can give you shelter. Will you come with me?"
With a half-questioning, half-smiling look of grateful wonder, the boy withdrew his hands from their uplifted, supplicating and almost protesting attitude against the locked Cathedral-door, and moving out of the porch shadows into the wide glory of the moonlight, he confronted his interlocutor--
"Will I come with you?" he said--"Nay, but I see you are a Cardinal of the Church, and it is I should ask 'will you receive me?' You do not know who I am--nor where I came from, and I, alas! may not tell you! I am alone; all--all alone,--for no one knows me in the world,- -I am quite poor and friendless, and have nothing where--with to pay you for your kindly shelter--I can only bless you!"
Very simply, very gravely the young boy spoke these words, his delicate head uplifted, his face shining in the moon-rays, and his slight, childish form erect with a grace which was not born of pride so much as of endurance, and again the Cardinal trembled, though he knew not why. Yet in his very agitation, the desire he had to persuade the tired child to go with him grew stronger and overmastered every other feeling.
"Come then," he said, smiling and extending his hand, "Come, and you shall sleep in my room for the remainder of the night, and to-morrow we will talk of the future. At present you need repose."
The boy smiled gratefully but said nothing, and the Cardinal, satisfied with the mere look of assent walked with his foundling across the square and into the Hotel Poitiers. Arrived at his own bed-room, he smoothed his couch and settled the pillows carefully with active zeal and tenderness. The boy stood silently, looking on.
"Sleep now, my child," said the Cardinal,--"and forget all your troubles. Lie down here; no one will disturb you till the morning."
"But you, my lord Cardinal," said the boy--"Are you depriving yourself of comfort in order to give it to me? This is not the way of the world!"
"It is MY way," said the Cardinal cheerfully,--"And if the world has been unkind to you, my boy, still take courage,--it will not always be unjust! Do not trouble yourself concerning me; I shall sleep well on the sofa in the next room--indeed, I shall sleep all the better for knowing that your tears have ceased, and that for the present at least you are safely sheltered."
With a sudden quick movement the boy advanced and caught the Cardinal's hands caressingly in his own.
"Oh, are you sure you understand?" he said, his voice growing singularly sweet and almost tender as he spoke--"Are you sure that it is well for you to shelter me?--I--a stranger,--poor, and with no one to speak for me? How do you know what I may be? Shall I not perhaps prove ungrateful and wrong your kindness?"
His worn little face upturned, shone in the dingy little room with a sudden brightness such as one might imagine would illumine the features of an angel, and Felix Bonpre looked down upon him half fascinated, in mingled pity and wonder.
"Such results are with God, my child," he said gently--"I do not seek your gratitude. It is certainly well for me that I should shelter you,--it would be ill indeed if I permitted any living creature to suffer for lack of what I could give. Rest here in peace, and remember it is for my own pleasure as well as for your good that I desire you to sleep well."
"And you do not even ask my name?" said the boy, half smiling and still raising his sorrowful deep blue eyes to the Cardinal's face.
"You will tell me that when you please," said Felix, laying one hand upon the soft curls that clustered over his foundling's forehead--"I am in no wise curious. It is enough for me to know that you are a child and alone in the world,--such sorrow makes me your servant."
Gently the boy loosened his clasp of the Cardinal's hands.
"Then I have found a friend!" he said,--"That is very strange!" He paused, and the smile that had once before brightened his countenance shone again like a veritable flash of sunlight--"You have the right to know my name, and if you choose, to call me by it,--it is Manuel."
"Manuel!" echoed the Cardinal--"No more than that?"
"No more than that," replied the boy gravely--"I am one of the world's waifs and strays,--one name suffices me."
There followed a brief pause, in which the old man and the child looked at each other full and steadfastly, and once again an inexplicable nervous trembling seized the Cardinal. Overcoming this with an effort, he said softly,--
"Then--Manuel!--good night! Sleep--and Our Lady's blessing be upon you!"
Signing the cross in air he retired, carefully shutting the door and leaving his new-found charge to rest. When he was once by himself in the next room, however, he made no attempt to sleep,--he merely drew a chair to the window and sat down, full of thoughts which utterly absorbed him. There was nothing unusual, surely, in his finding a small lost boy and giving him a night's lodging?--then why was he so affected by it? He could not tell. He fully realized that the plaintive beauty of the child had its share in the powerful attraction he felt,--but there was something else in the nature of his emotion which he found it impossible to define. It was as though some great blankness in his life had been suddenly filled;--as if the boy whom he had found solitary and weeping within the porch of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, belonged to him in some mysterious way and was linked to his life so closely and completely as to make parting impossible. But what a fantastic notion! Viewed by the light of calm reason, there was nothing in the occurrence to give rise to any such sentiment. Here was a poor little wayfarer, evidently without parents, home, or friends,--and the Cardinal had given him a night's lodging, and to-morrow--yes, to-morrow, he would give him food and warm clothing and money,--and perhaps a recommendation to the Archbishop in order that he might get a chance of free education and employment in Rouen, while proper enquiries were being made about him. That was the soberly prosaic and commonplace view to take of the matter. The personality of the little fellow was intensely winning,--but after all, that had nothing to do with the facts of the case. He was a waif and stray, as he himself had said; his name, so far as he seemed to know it, was Manuel,--an ordinary name enough in France,--and his age might be about twelve,--not more. Something could be done for him,--something SHOULD be done for him before the Cardinal parted with him. But this idea of "parting" was just what seemed so difficult to contemplate! Puzzled beyond measure at the strange state of mind in which he found himself, Felix Bonpre went over and over again all the events of the day in order,--his arrival in Rouen,--his visit to the Cathedral, and the grand music he had heard or fancied he heard there,--his experience with the sceptical little Patoux children and their mother,--his conversation with the Archbishop, in which he had felt much more excitement than he was willing to admit,--his dream wherein he had been so painfully impressed with a sense of the desertion, emptiness, and end of the world, and finally his discovery of the little lonely and apparently forsaken boy, thrown despairingly as it were against the closed Cathedral, like a frail human wreck cast up from the gulf of the devouring sea. Each incident, trivial in itself, yet seemed of particular importance, though he could not explain or analyse why it should be so. Meditatively he sat and watched the moon sink like a silver bubble falling downward in the dark,--the stars vanished one by one,--and a faint brown-gold line of suggestive light in the east began the slow creation of a yet invisible dawn. Presently, yielding to a vague impulse of inexplicable tenderness, he rose softly and went to the threshold of the room where his foundling slept. Holding his breath, he listened--but there was no sound. Very cautiously and noiselessly he opened the door, and looked in,--a delicate halflight came through the latticed window and seemed to concentrate itself on the bed where the tired wanderer lay. His fine youthful profile was distinctly outlined,--the soft bright hair clustered like a halo round his broad brows,--and the two small hands were crossed upon his breast, while in his sleep he smiled. Always touched by the beauty, innocence and helplessness of childhood, something in the aspect of this little lad moved the venerable prelate's heart to an unwonted emotion,--and looking upon him, he prayed for guidance as to what he should best do to rescue so gentle and young a creature from the cruelties of the world.
V.
"He has trusted me," said the Cardinal,--"I have found him, and I cannot--dare not--forsake him. For the Master says 'Whosoever shall receive one such little child in My name receiveth Me'."
The next morning broke fair and calm, and as soon as the Patoux household were astir, Cardinal Bonpre sought Madame Patoux in her kitchen, and related to her the story of his night's adventure. She listened deferentially, but could not refrain from occasional exclamations of surprise, mingled with suggestions of warning.
"It is like your good heart, Monseigneur," she said, "to give your own bed to a stray child out of the street,--one, too, of whom you know nothing,--but alas! how often such goodness is repaid by ingratitude! The more charity you show the less thanks you receive,- -yes, indeed, it is often so!--and it seems as if the Evil One were in it! For look you, I myself have never done a kindness yet without getting a cruelty in exchange for it."
"That is a sad experience, my daughter," returned the Cardinal smiling,--"Nevertheless, it is our duty to go on doing kindnesses, no matter what the results to ourselves may be. It is understood--is it not? that we are to be misjudged in this world. If we had nothing to suffer, what would be the use of exercising such virtues as patience and endurance?"
"Ah, Monseigneur, for you it is different," said Madame Patoux shaking her head and sighing--"You are like the blessed saints--safe in a niche of Holy Church, with Our Lady for ever looking after you. But for poor people such as we are--we see the rough side of life, Monseigneur--and we know that there is very little goodness about in the world,--and as for patience and endurance!--why, no one in these days has the patience to endure even the least contradiction! Two men,--aye even brothers,--will fight for a word like mongrels quarrelling over a bone;--and two women will scream themselves hoarse if one should have a lover more than the other--asking your pardon, Monseigneur, for such wicked talk! Still, wicked as it may be, it is true--and not all the powers of Heaven seem to care about making things better. And for this boy,--believe me,--you had better leave him to his own way--for there will be no chance of getting such a poor little waif into the school unless his father and mother are known, or unless someone will adopt him, which is not likely . . . for Rouen is full of misery, and there are enough mouths to feed in most families--and . . . mon Dieu!--is that the child?"
Thus abruptly she broke off her speech, utterly taken aback as she suddenly perceived the little Manuel standing before her. Poorly clad in the roughest garments as he was, his grace and plaintive beauty moved her heart to quick compassion for his loneliness as he came towards the Cardinal, who, extending one hand, drew him gently to his side and asked if he had slept well?
"Thanks to your goodness, my lord Cardinal," the boy replied, "I slept so well that I thought I was in Heaven! I heard the angels singing in my dreams;--yes!--I heard all the music of a happy world, in which there never had been known a sin or sorrow!"
He rested his fair head lightly against the Cardinal's arm and smiled. Madame Patoux gazed at him in fascinated silence,--gazed and gazed,--till she found her eyes suddenly full of tears. Then she turned away to hide them,--but not before Cardinal Bonpre had observed her emotion.
"Well, good MOTHER" he said with gentle emphasis on the word--"Would you have me forsake this child that I have found?"
"No, Monseigneur,--no," said Madame Patoux very softly and tremulously--"It is almost as if he were a little lost Angel sent to comfort you."
A curious thrill went through the Cardinal. An angel to comfort him! He looked down at Manuel who still clung caressingly to his arm, and who met his earnest scrutiny with a sweet candid smile.
"Where did you come from, Manuel?" asked Bonpre suddenly.
"I cannot tell you," the boy answered, straightly, yet simply.
The Cardinal paused a moment, his keen penetrating eyes dwelling kindly on the noble young face beside him.
"You do not wish to tell me,--is that so?" he pursued.
"Yes," said Manuel quietly--"I do not wish to tell you. And if, because of this, you regret your kindness to me, my lord Cardinal, I will go away at once and trouble you no more."
But at these words the Cardinal felt such a sharp consciousness of pain and loss that his nerves ached with positive fear.
"Nay, nay, my child," he said anxiously--"I cannot let you go. It shall be as you please,--I will not think that you could do yourself or me a wrong by concealing what would be right for you to tell. It is true that you are alone in the world?"
"Quite, quite alone!" answered Manuel, a faint shadow darkening the serenity of his eyes--"No one was ever more alone than I!"
Madame Patoux drew nearer and listened.
"And there is no person living who has the right to claim you?"
"None!"
"And is it not strange, Monseigneur," murmured Madame Patoux at this juncture--"The little lad does not speak as if he were ignorant! It is as though he had been well taught and carefully nurtured."
Manuel's deep eyes dwelt upon her with a meditative sweetness.
"I have taught myself;" he said simply--"Not out of books, perhaps, but out of nature. The trees and rivers, the flowers and birds have talked to me and explained many things;--I have learned all I know from what God has told me."
His voice was so gentle and tender that Madame Patoux was infinitely touched by its soft plaintiveness.
"Poor child!" she murmured,--"He has no doubt been wandering through the country, without a soul to help him. Alas, that troubles should begin for one so young! Perhaps he does not even know a prayer!"
"Oh yes!" said Manuel quickly--"Prayer is like thought,--God is so good that it is only natural to thank and praise Him. Is it not so?"
"It should be natural, my boy," answered the Cardinal slowly and with a slight accent of melancholy,--"But for many of us in these days I fear it is more natural still to forget than to remember. Too often we take gifts and ignore the giver. But come now and breakfast in my room;--for the present you shall remain with me, and I will see what can best be done for your future welfare."
And turning to Madame Patoux he added smilingly--"You, my daughter, with children of your own to care for, will no longer blame me for my interest in this child, who is without protection in a somewhat rough world. We of the Church dare not 'offend one of these little ones'."
"Ah, Monseigneur!" murmured Madame,--"If all in the Church were like you, some poor folks would believe in God more willingly. But when people are starving and miserable, it is easy to understand that often they will curse the priests and even religion itself, for making such a mock of them as to keep on telling them about the joys of heaven, when they are tormented to the very day of their death on earth, and are left without hope or rescue of any kind--"
But the Cardinal had disappeared with his young charge and Madame's speech was lost upon him. She had therefore to content herself with relating the story of "Monseigneur's foundling" to her husband, who just then came into the kitchen to take his breakfast before starting off to work in his market-garden. He listened with interest and attention.
"A boy is always a trouble," he said sententiously--"And it is likely that so Monseigneur will find it. How old would the child be?"
"About twelve, I should say," answered Madame--"But beautiful as a little angel, Jean!"
"That's a pity!" and Patoux shook his head ominously--"Tis bad enough when a girl is beautiful,--but a boy!--Well, well! Monseigneur is a wise man, and a saint they say,--he knows best,-- but I fear he has taken a burden upon himself which he will very soon regret! What dost thou think of it, petite?"
Madame hesitated a moment before replying.
"Truly, I do not know what to think," she answered--"For myself, I have not spoken to the child. I have seen him,--yes!--and at the sight of him a something in my throat rose up and choked me as it were,--and stopped me from saying a rough word. Such a lonely gentle lad!--one could not be harsh with him, and yet--"
"Yet! Oh, yes, I know!" said Patoux, finishing his coffee at a gulp and smiling,--"Women will always be women,--and a handsome face in girl or boy is enough to make fools of them all. Where are the children? Are they gone to school?"
"Yes--they went before the Cardinal was up. 'Tis a Saturday, and they will be back early,--they are going to bring little Fabien Doucet to Monseigneur."
"What for?" enquired Patoux, his round eyes opening widely in amazement.
"Oh, for a strange fancy! That he may bless the child and pray Our Lady to cure him of his lameness. It was Babette's whim. I told her the Cardinal was a saint,--and she said,--well! she said she would never believe it unless he worked a miracle! The wicked mischief that girl is!--as bad as Henri, who puts a doubt on everything!"
"'Tis the school," said Jean gloomily--"I must speak to Pere Laurent."
"Truly that would be well," said Madame--"He may explain what we cannot. All the same, you may be sure the children WILL bring Fabien Doucet to Monseigneur;--they have made up their minds about it,--and if the little miserable's lameness gets no better, we shall have work enough in future to make the saints respected!"
Patoux muttered something inaudible, and went his way. Life was in his opinion, a very excellent thing,--nevertheless there were a few details about it which occasionally troubled him, and one of these details was decidedly the "national education" question. It struck him as altogether remarkable that the State should force him to send his children to school whether he liked it or no; and moreover that the system of instruction at the said school should be totally opposed to his own ideas. He would have certainly wished his son to learn to read and write, and then to have been trained as a thorough florist and gardener;--while for his daughter he also desired reading and writing as a matter of course, and then a complete education in cooking and domestic economy, so that she might be a useful and efficient wife and mother when the proper time for such duties came. Astronomy he felt they could both do without, and most of the "physical sciences." Religion he considered an absolute necessity, and this was the very thing that was totally omitted from the national course of education. He was well aware that there are countless numbers of unhappy people nowadays who despise religion and mock at the very idea of a God. Every day he saw certain works exposed for sale on the out-of-door bookstalls which in their very titles proclaimed the hideous tone of blasphemy which in France is gradually becoming universal,--but this did not affect his own sense of what was right and just. He was a very plain common man, but he held holy things in reverence, and instinctively felt that, if the world were in truth a bad place, it was likely to become much worse if all faith in God were taken out of it. And when he reached his plot of ground that morning, and set to work as usual, he was, for a non-reflective man, very much absorbed in thought. His heavy tramping feet over the soil startled some little brown birds from their hidden nests, and sent them flying to and fro through the clear air uttering sharp chirrups of terror,--and, leaning on his spade, he paused and looked at them meditatively.
"Everything is afraid," he said,--"Birds, beasts, and men,--all are afraid of something and cannot tell what it is that frightens them. It seems hard sometimes that there should be so much trouble and struggle just to live--however, the good God knows best,--and if we could not think and hope and believe He knew best, we might just as well light up a charcoal fire, shut all the doors and windows, and say 'Bon jour! Bon jour, Monsieur le bon Dieu!--for if YOU do not know YOUR business, it is evident we do not know ours, and therefore 'tis best for both our sakes to make an end of sheer Stupidity!'"
He chuckled at his own reasoning, and moistening his hands vigorously, seized his spade and began to bank up a ridge of celery, singing "Bon jour, Monsieur le bon Dieu!" under his breath without the slightest idea of irreverence. And looking up at the bright sky occasionally, he wished he had seen the stray boy rescued from the streets by Cardinal Bonpre.
"That he will be a trouble, there is no doubt," he said as he turned and patted the rich dark earth--"Never was there a boy born yet into the world that was not a trouble except our Lord, and even in His case His own people did not know what to make of Him!"
Meantime, while Jean Patoux dug in his garden, and sang and soliloquized, his two children, Henri and Babette, their school hours being ended, had run off to the market, and were talking vivaciously with a big brown sturdy woman, who was selling poultry at a stall, under a very large patched red umbrella. She was Martine Doucet, reported to have the worst temper and most vixenish tongue in all the town, though there were some who said her sourness of humour only arose from the hardships of her life, and the many troubles she had been fated to endure. Her husband, a fine handsome man, earning good weekly wages as a stone-mason, had been killed by a fall from a ladder, while engaged in helping to build one of the new houses on the Boulevards, and her only child Fabien, a boy of ten had, when a baby, tumbled from the cart in which his mother was taking her poultry to market, and though no injury was apparent at the time, had, from the effects of the fall, grown into a poor little twisted mite of humanity with a bent spine, and one useless leg which hung limply from his body, while he could scarcely hobble about on the other, even with the aid of a crutch. He had a soft, pretty, plaintive face of his own, the little Fabien, and very gentle ways,--but he was sensitively conscious of his misfortune, and in his own small secret soul he was always praying that he might die while he was yet a child, and not grow up to be a burden to his mother. Martine, however, adored him; and it was through her intense love for this child of hers that she had, in a strange vengeful sort of mood abandoned God, and flung an open and atheistical defiance in the face of her confessor, who, missing her at mass, had ventured to call upon her and seriously reproach her for neglecting the duties of her religion. Martine had whirled round upon him,--a veritable storm in petticoats.
"Religion!" she cried--"Oh--he! What good has it done for ME, if you please! When I said my prayers night and morning, went to mass and confession, and told my rosary every Mary-Feast, what happened? Was not my man killed and my child crippled? And then,--(not to lose faith--) did I not give the saints every chance of behaving themselves? For my child's sake did I not earn good money and pay it to the Church in special masses that he might be cured of his lameness? And Novenas in plenty, and candles in plenty to the Virgin, and fastings of my own and penitences? And is the child not as lame as ever? Look at him!--the dear angel!--with never an evil thought or a wicked way,--and will you try to make me believe there is a good God, when He will not help a poor little creature like that, to be happy, though He is prayed to night and morning for it! No--no! Churches are kept up for priests to make a fat living out of,--but there is never a God in them that I can see;--and as for the Christ, who had only to be asked in order to heal the sick, there is not so much as a ghost of Him anywhere! If what you priests tell us were true, poor souls such as I am, would get comfort and help in our sorrows, but it is all a lie!--the whole thing!--and when we are in trouble, we have got to bear it as best we can, without so much as a kind word from our neighbours, let alone any pity from the saints. Go to mass again? Not I!--nor to confession either!--and no more of my earnings will click into your great brass collection plate, mon reverend! Ah no!--I have been a foolish woman indeed, to trust so long in a God who for all my tears and prayers never gives me a sign or a hope of an answer,--and though I suppose this wretched world of ours was made by somebody, whoever it is that has done it is a cruel creature at best, so _I_ say,--without as much good feeling as there is in the heart of an ordinary man, and without the sense of the man either! For who that thinks twice about it would make a world where everything is only born to die?--and for no other use at all! Bah! It is sheer folly and wickedness to talk to me of a God!--a God, if there were one, would surely be far above torturing the creatures He has made, all for nothing!"
And the priest who heard this blasphemous and savage tirade on the part of Martine Doucet, retreated from her in amazement and horror, and presently gave out that she was possessed of a devil, and was unfit to be admitted to the Holy Sacrament. Whereat, when she heard of it, Martine laughed loudly and ferociously.
"Look you!--what a charitable creature a priest is!" she cried--"If you don't do the things he considers exactly right and fitting, he tells your neighbours that the devil has got you!--and so little does he care to pick you out of the clutches of this same devil, that he refuses you the Sacrament, though THAT is said to drive away Satan by the mere touch of it! But wait till I ASK to have the Sacrament given to me!--it will be time enough then to refuse it! Many a fat chicken of my stock has the reverend father had as a free gift to boil in his soup maigre!" and again she laughed angrily--" But no more of them does he get to comfort his stomach while doing penance for his soul!--the hypocrite! He must find another silly woman to cheat with his stories of a good God who never does anything but kill and curse us every one!--he has had all that he will ever get out of Martine Doucet!"
It was to this redoubtable virago that Henri and Babette had betaken themselves in the market place directly school was over. She always held the same stall in the same position on market days,--and she sat under her red umbrella on a rough wooden bench, knitting rapidly, now keeping an eye on her little lame son, coiled up in a piece of matting beside her, and anon surveying her stock-in-trade of ducks and geese and fowls, which were heaped on her counter, their wrung necks drooping limply from the board, and their yellow feet tied helplessly together and shining like bits of dull gold in the warm light of the September sun. She listened with an impassive countenance while Babette poured out her story of the great Cardinal,--the Cardinal Felix Bonpre, whom people said was a saint,- -how he had come unexpectedly to stay two nights at the Hotel Poitiers,--how "petite maman" had declared he was so good that even angels might visit him,--how kind and gentle and grand he seemed,-- "Yes," said Babette somewhat eagerly, "there was no doubt that he LOOKED good,--and we have told him all about Fabien and he has promised to bless him and ask Our Lord to cure his lameness."
"Well, and of what use is that, mignonne?" demanded Martine, clicking her knitting-needles violently and stooping over her work to wink away the sudden tears that had risen in her bold brown eyes at Babette's enthusiastic desire to benefit her afflicted child.-- "Asking our Lord is poor business,--you may ask and ask, but you never get answered!"
Babette hung her curly brown head despondingly, and looked appealingly at her brother. Now Henri was a decided cynic;--but his sister exercised a weird fascination over him,--a sort of power to command which he always felt more or less constrained to obey. He stared solemnly at Martine, and then at the little Fabien, who, half rising from his mat, had listened with a visibly painful interest to Babette's story.
"I think you might let us take Fabien and see if a Cardinal CAN do anything," he said with a kind of judicial air, as of one who, though considering the case hopeless, had no objection to try a last desperate remedy. "This one is a very old man, and he must know a good deal. He could not do any harm. And I am sure Babette would like to find out if there is any use at all in a Cardinal. I should like it too. You see we went into Notre Dame last night,--Babette and I,--and everything was dark,--all the candles were out at Our Lady's statue--and we had only ten centimes between us. And the candles are ten centimes each. So we could only light one. But we lit that one, and said an Ave for Fabien. And the candle was all by itself in the Cathedral. And now I think we ought to take him to the Cardinal."
Martine shook her head, pursed up her lips, and knitted more violently than ever.
"It is all no use--no use!" she muttered--"There is no God,--or if there is, He must be deaf as well as blind!"
But here suddenly the weak plaintive voice of Fabien himself piped out--
"Oh, mother, let me go!"
Martine looked down at him.
"Let thee go? To see the Cardinal? Why he is nought but an old man, child, as helpless as any of us. What dost thou think he can do for thee?"
"Nothing!" and the boy clambered up on his crutch, and stood appealingly before his mother, his fair curls blowing back in the breeze,--"But I SHOULD like to see him. Oh, do let me go!"
Babette caught him by the hand.
"Yes, oh yes, Martine!" she exclaimed--"Let him come with us!"
Martine hesitated a moment longer, but she could never altogether resist an imploring look in her boy's eyes, or refuse any request he made of her,--and gradually the hard lines of her mouth relaxed into a half smile. Babette at once perceived this, and eagerly accepted it as a sign that she had gained her point.
"Come, Fabien!" she exclaimed delightedly--"Thy mother says yes! We will not be long gone, Martine! And perhaps we will bring him home quite well!"
Martine shook her head sorrowfully, and paused for a while in her knitting to watch the three children crossing the market-place together, Henri supporting her little son on one side, Babette on the other, both carefully aiding his slow and halting movements over the rough cobbles of the uneven pavement. Then as they all turned a corner and disappeared, she sighed, and a couple of bright tears splashed down on her knitting. But the next moment her eyes were as bold and keen and defiant as ever while she stood up to attend to two or three customers who just then approached her stall, and her voice was as shrill and sharp as any woman's voice could be in the noisy business of driving a bargain. Having disposed of three or four fat geese and fowls at a good profit, she chinked and counted the money in her apron pockets, hummed a tune, and looked up at the genial sky with an expression of disfavour.
"Oh, yes, 'tis a fine day!" she muttered,--"And the heavens look as if the saints lived in them;--but by and by the clouds will come, and the cold!--the sleet, the snow, the frost and the bitterness of winter!--and honest folk will starve while thieves make a good living!--that is the way the wise God arranges things in this world."
She gave a short laugh of scorn, and resumed the clicking of her needles, not raising her eyes from her work even when her neighbour, the old woman who sold vegetables at the next stall, ventured to address her.
"Where is thy unfortunate boy gone to, Martine?" she enquired,--"Is it wise to let him be with the Patoux children? They are strong and quick and full of mischief,--they might do him fresh injury in play without meaning it."
"I will trust them," answered Martine curtly,--"They have taken him to see a Cardinal."
"A Cardinal!" and the old woman craned her withered neck forward in amazement and began to laugh feebly,--"Nom de Jesus! That is strange! What does the Cardinal want with him?"
"Nothing," said Martine gruffly--"It seems that he is an old man who is kind to children, and the girl Babette has a fancy to get his blessing for my Fabien,--that is all."
"And that is little enough," responded the old vegetable-vendor, still laughing, or rather chuckling hoarsely--"A blessing is not worth much nowadays, is it Martine? It never puts an extra ounce of meat in the pot-au-feu,--and yet it is all one gets out of the priests for all the prayers and the praise. Last time I went to confession I accused myself of the sin of envy. I said 'Look here, my father, I am a widow and very old; and I have rheumatism in all my bones, and I have only a bit of matting to sleep on at home, and if I have a bad day with the market I can buy no food. And there is a woman living near me who has a warm house, with a stove in it,-- and blankets to cover her, and a bit of money put by, and I envy her her blankets and her stove and her house and her money. Is that a sin?' And he said it was a sin; but that he would absolve me from it if I said ten Paters and ten Aves before Our Lady of Bon-Secours. And then he gave me his blessing,--but no blankets and no stove and no money. And I have not said ten Paters and Aves yet, because my bones have ached too much all the week for me to walk up the hill to Bon-Secours. And the blessing has been no use to me at all."
"Nor is it likely to be!" scoffed Martine--"I thought you had given up all that Church-nonsense long ago."
"Nay--nay--not altogether,"--murmured the old woman timidly--"I am very old,--and one never knows--there may be truth in some of it. It is the burning and the roasting in hell that I think of,--you know that is very likely to happen, Martine!--because you see, in this life we have nothing but trouble,--so whoever made us must like to see us suffering;--it must be a pleasure to God, and so it is sure to go on and on always. And I am afraid!--and if a candle now and then to St. Joseph would help matters, I am not the one to grudge it,--it is better to burn a candle than burn one's self!"
Martine laughed loudly, but made no answer. She could not waste her time arguing against the ridiculous superstitions of an old creature who was so steeped in ignorance as to think that a votive candle could rescue her soul from a possible hell. She went on knitting in silence till a sudden shadow came between her and the sunlight, and a girl's voice, harsh, yet with a certain broken sweetness in it, said--
"A fine morning's killing, aye! All their necks wrung,--all dead birds! Once they could fly--fly and swim! Fly and swim! All dead now--and sold cheap in the open market!"
A shrill laugh finished this outburst, but Martine knew who it was that spoke, and maintained her equanimity.
"Is that you again, Marguerite?" she said, not unkindly--"You will tire yourself to death wandering about the streets all day."
Marguerite Valmond, "la folle" as she was called by the townsfolk, shook her head and smiled cunningly. She was a tall girl, with black hair disordered and falling loosely about her pale face,--her eyes were dark and lustrous, but wild, and with a hunted expression in them,--and her dress was composed of the strangest remnants of oddly assorted materials and colours pinned about her without any order or symmetry, the very idea of decent clothing being hardly considered, as her bosom was half exposed and her legs were bare. She wore no head-covering, and her whole aspect was that of one who had suddenly awakened from a hideous dream and was striving to forget its horrors.
"I shall never be tired!" she said--"If I could be tired I should sleep,--but I never sleep! I am looking for HIM, you know!--it was at the fair I lost him--you remember the great fair? And when I find him I shall kill him! It is quite easy to kill--you take a sharp glittering thing, so!" and she snatched up a knife that lay on Martine's counter--"And you plunge it--so!" and she struck it down with singular fury through the breast of one of the "dead birds" which were Martine's stock-in-trade. Then she threw the knife on the ground--rubbed her hands together, tossed her head, and laughed again--"That is how I shall do it when I meet him!"
Martine said nothing. She simply removed the one stabbed bird from among the others, and setting it aside, picked up the knife from the ground and went on knitting as calmly as ever.
"I am going to see the Archbishop," proceeded Marguerite, tossing back her dishevelled locks and making one or two fantastic dancesteps as she spoke--"The great Archbishop of this wonderful city of Rouen! I want to ask him how it happened that God made men. It was a mistake which He must be sorry for! The Archbishop knows everything;--he will tell me about it. Ah!--what a beautiful mistake is the Archbishop himself!--and how soon women find it out! Bon jour, Martine!"
"Bon jour, Marguerite!" responded Martine quietly.
Singing to herself, the crazed girl sauntered off. Several of the market women looked after her.
"She killed her child, they say," muttered the old vegetable-seller- -"But no one knows--"
"Sh--sh--sh!" hissed Martine angrily--"What one does not know one should not say. Mayhap there never was a child at all. Whatever the wrong was, she has suffered for it;--and if the man who led her astray ever comes nigh her, his life is not worth a centime."
"Rough justice!" said one of the market porters, who had just paused close by to light his pipe.
"Aye, rough justice!" echoed Martine--"When justice is not given to the people, the people take it for themselves! And if a man deals ill by a woman, he has murdered her as surely as if he had put a knife through her;--and 'tis but even payment when he gets the knife into himself. Things in this life are too easy for men and too hard for women; men make the laws for their own convenience, and never a thought of us at all in the making. They are a selfish lot!"
The porter laughed carelessly, and having lit his pipe to his satisfaction went his way.
A great many more customers now came to Martine's stall, and for upwards of an hour there was shrill argument and driving of bargains till she had pretty well cleared her counter of all its stock. Then she sat down again and looked to right and left of the market-place for any sign of the Patoux children returning with her little son, but there was not a glimpse of them anywhere.
"I wonder what they are doing!" she thought--"And I wonder what sort of a Cardinal it is they have taken the child to see! These great princes of the Church care nothing for the poor,--the very Pope allows half Italy to starve while he shuts himself up with his treasures in the Vatican;--what should a great Cardinal care for my poor little Fabien! If the stories of the Christ were true, and one could only take the child to Him, then indeed there might be a chance of cure!--but it is all a lie,--and the worst of the lie is that it would give us all so much comfort and happiness if it were only true! It is like holding out a rope to a drowning man and snatching it away again. And when the rope goes, the sooner one sinks under the waves the better!"
VI.
The Cardinal was still in his room alone with the boy Manuel, when Madame Patoux, standing at her door under the waving tendrils of the "creeping jenny" and shading her eyes from the radiance of the sun, saw her children approaching with Fabien Doucet between them.
"Little wretches that they are!" she murmured--"Once let them get an idea into their heads and nothing will knock it out! Now I shall have to tell Monseigneur that they are here,--what an impertinence it seems!--and yet he is so gentle, and has such a good heart that perhaps he will not mind . . ."
Here she broke off her soliloquy as the children came up, Babette eagerly demanding to know where the Cardinal was. Madame Patoux set her arms akimbo and surveyed the little group of three halfpityingly, half derisively.
"The Cardinal has not left his room since breakfast," she answered-- "He is playing Providence already to a poor lad lost in the streets, and for that matter lost in the world, without father or mother to look after him,--he was found in Notre Dame last night,--"
"Why, mother," interrupted Henri--"how could a boy get into Notre Dame last night? When Babette and I went there, nobody was in the church at all,--and we left one candle burning all alone in the darkness,--and when we came out the Suisse swore at us for having gone in, and then locked the door."
"Well, if one must be so exact, the boy was not found actually in Notre Dame, obstinate child," returned his mother impatiently--"It happened at midnight,--the good Cardinal heard someone crying and went to see who it was. And he found a poor boy outside the Cathedral weeping as if his heart were breaking, and leaning his head against the hard door for a pillow. And he brought him back and gave him his own bed to sleep in;--and the lad is with him now."
Little Fabien Doucet, leaning on his crutch, looked up with interest.
"Is he lame like me?" he asked.
"No, child," replied Madame compassionately--"He is straight and strong. In truth a very pretty boy."
Fabien sighed. Babette made a dash forward.
"I will go and see him!" she said--"And I will call Monseigneur."
"Babette! How dare you! Babette!"
But Babette had scurried defiantly past her mother, and breathless with a sense of excitement and disobedience intermingled, had burst into the Cardinal's room without knocking. There on the threshold she paused,--somewhat afraid at her own boldness,--and startled too at the sight of Manuel, who was seated near the window opposite the Cardinal, and who turned his deep blue eyes upon her with a look of enquiry. The Cardinal himself rose and turned to greet her, and as the wilful little maid met his encouraging glance and noted the benign sweetness of his expression she trembled,--and losing nerve, began to cry.
"Monseigneur . . . Monseigneur . . ." she stammered.
"Yes, my child,--what is it?" said the Cardinal kindly--"Do not be afraid,--I am at your service. You have brought the little friend you spoke to me of yesterday?"
Babette peeped shyly at him through her tears, and drooping her head, answered with a somewhat smothered "Yes."
"That is well,--I will go to him at once,"--and the Cardinal paused a moment looking at Manuel, who as if responding to his unuttered wish, rose and approached him--"And you, Manuel--you will also come. You see, my child," went on the good prelate addressing Babette, the while he laid a gently caressing hand on her hair--"Another little friend has come to me who is also very sad,--and though he is not crippled or ill, he is all alone in the world, which is, for one so young, a great hardship. You must be sorry for him too, as well as for your own poor playmate."
But Babette was seized with an extraordinary timidity, and had much ado to keep back the tears that rose in her throat and threatened to break out in a burst of convulsive sobbing. She did not know in the least what was the matter with her,--she was only conscious of an immense confusion and shyness which were quite new to her ordinarily bold and careless nature. Manuel's face frightened yet fascinated her; he looked, she thought, like the beautiful angel of the famous stained glass "Annunciation" window in the crumbling old church of St. Maclou. She dared not speak to him,--she could only steal furtive glances at him from under the curling length of her dark tear-wet lashes,--and when the Cardinal took her by the hand and descended the staircase with her to the passage where the crippled Fabien waited, she could not forbear glancing back every now and then over her shoulder at the slight, supple, almost aerial figure of the boy, who, noiselessly, and with a light gliding step, followed. And now Madame Patoux came forward;--a bulky, anxious figure of gesticulation and apology.
"Alas, Monseigneur!" she began plaintively--"It is too shameful that your quiet should be disturbed in this way, but if you could only know the obstinacy of these children! Ah yes!--if you knew all, you would pity their parents!--you would indeed! And this is the unhappy little creature they have brought to you, Monseigneur,--a sad sight truly!--and afflicted sorely by the will of God,--though one could hardly say that God was anywhere about when he fell, poor baby, from his mother's cart and twisted his body awry,--one would rather think the devil was in the business, asking your pardon, Monseigneur; for surely the turning of a human creature into a useless lump has little of good, or divine kindness in it! Now make thy best bow to the Cardinal," went on Madame with a gasp for breath in her voluble speech, addressing the little cripple--" And it is a pity them hast no time to confess thy sins and take the Sacrament before so holy a man lay hands on thee!"
But at these words Cardinal Bonpre turned to her with a reproving gesture.
"I pray you do not call me holy, my daughter," he said earnestly, the old shadows of pain and prote gathering in his eyes, "Nothing can make me more sorrowful than to hear such an epithet applied to one who is so full of errors and sins as myself. Try to look upon me just as I am,--merely an old man, nearing the grave, with nothing of merit in me beyond the desire to serve our Lord and obey His commands,--a desire which is far stronger than the practical force to obey it. Much that I would do I cannot; and in much that I attempt I fail. Come to me, my child."
Here, interrupting himself, he bent down, and putting his arms tenderly round Fabien, lifted him bodily, crutch and all, and carried him into the next room, and as he did so, the young Manuel glided in before him, and stood beside his chair, his blue eyes shining with a soft and eager light of interest, and a little smile lifting the delicate upper curve of his lips as he looked on. Fabien meanwhile, perched on the Cardinal's knee, and held close in the Cardinal's arms, was not at all frightened,--he simply sat, contented, gazing up confidingly at the pale venerable face above him. Henri and Babette, having as they considered, got their way, stayed at the door half afraid to enter, and their mother peered over their heads at the little scene in mingled awe and curiosity.
"My poor child," then said the Cardinal gently--"I want you to understand quite clearly how sorry I am for you, and how willingly I would do anything in the world to make you a strong, well, and happy boy. But you must not fancy that I can cure you. I told your little friends yesterday that I was not a saint, such as you read about in story-books,--and that I could not work miracles, because I am not worthy to be so filled with the Divine Spirit as to heal with a touch like the better servants of our Blessed Lord. Nevertheless I firmly believe that if God saw that it was good for you to be strong and well, He would find ways to make you so. Sometimes sickness and sorrow are sent to us for our advantage,--sometimes even death comes to us for our larger benefit, though we may not understand how it is so till afterwards. But in Heaven everything will be made clear; and even our griefs will be turned into joys,--do you understand?"
"Yes," murmured Fabien gravely, but two large tears welled up in his plaintive eyes as the faint glimmer of hope he had encouraged as to the possibility of his being miraculously cured by the touch of a saintly Cardinal, expired in the lonely darkness of his little afflicted soul.
"That is well," continued the Cardinal kindly--"And now, since it is so difficult for you to kneel, you shall stay where you are in my arms,--so!"--and he set him on his knee in a position of even greater comfort than before, "You shall simply shut your eyes, and clasp your little hands together as I put them here,"--and as he spoke he crossed the child's hands on his silver crucifix-"And I will ask our Lord to come and make you well,--for of myself I can do nothing."
At these words Henri and Babette glanced at each other questioningly, and then as if simultaneously moved by some inexplicable emotion, dropped on their knees,--their mother, too stout and unwieldy to do this with either noiselessness or satisfaction to herself, was contented to bend her head as low as she could get it. Manuel remained standing. Leaning against the Cardinal's chair, his eyes fixed on the crippled Fabien, he had the aspect of a young Angel of compassion, whose sole immortal desire was to lift the burden of sorrow and pain from the lives of suffering humanity. And after a minute or two passed in silent meditation, the Cardinal laid his hands tenderly on Fabien's fair curly head and prayed aloud.
"Oh merciful Christ! Most pitying and gentle Redeemer!--to Whom in the days of Thy sacred life on earth, the sick and suffering and lame and blind were brought, and never sent away unhealed or uncomforted; consider, we beseech Thee, the sufferings of this Thy little child, deprived of all the joys which Thou hast made so sweet for those who are strong and straight in their youth, and who have no ailment to depress their courage or to quench the ardour of their aspiring souls. Look compassionately upon him, oh gentle King and Master of all such children!--and even as Thou wert a child Thyself, be pleased to heal him of his sad infirmity. For, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make this bent body straight and these withered muscles strong,--from death itself Thou canst ordain life, and nothing is impossible to Thee! But above all things, gracious Saviour, we do pray Thee so to lift and strengthen this child's soul, that if it is destined he should still be called upon to bear his present pain and trouble, grant to him such perfection in his inward spirit that he may prove worthy to be counted among Thy angels in the bright Hereafter. To Thy care, and to Thy comfort, and to Thy healing, great Master, we commend him, trusting him entirely to Thy mercy, with perfect resignation to Thy Divine Will. For the sake and memory of Thy most holy childhood mercifully help and bless this child! Amen!"
A deep silence ensued. Only the slow ticking of the big oldfashioned clock in Madame Patoux's kitchen, which was next door to the room they were all in, could be distinctly heard. Henri and Babette were the first to stir. They got up from their knees, brushed the dust of the floor from their clothes, and stared curiously at Fabien. Was a miracle going to happen? Fabien, however- -still resting against the Cardinal's breast, with his meagre little hands clasped tight on the Cardinal's crucifix, kept his eyes solemnly shut and gave no sign, till the Cardinal himself gently moved him and set him down. Then he glanced around him bewilderingly, tottered, and would have fallen had he not been given his little crutch for support. Very pathetic was the smile which then quivered on his pale lips,--very doleful was the shake of his head as he prepared to hobble away.
"Thank you very much, Monseigneur," he murmured gently--"I felt almost cured while you were praying,--but I am afraid it is no use! You see there are so many miserable people in the world,--many cripples, too,--I am not the only one. Our Lord must have enough to do if He is asked to heal them all! But I am sure you have done everything you can for me, and I am grateful to you, Monseigneur. Good-bye!"
"Good-bye, my child!" and the Cardinal, strongly moved by the sight of the little helpless twisted figure, and painfully impressed too by the sense of his own entire powerlessness to remove the cause of the trouble, bent down and kissed him--"Believe me, if the giving of my own life could make you strong, you should have that life willingly. May God bless and heal you!"
At that moment Manuel moved from the place he had kept near the Cardinal's chair. With a light, eager step forward, he went up to the little cripple, and putting his arms round him kissed him on the forehead.
"Good-bye, dear little brother!" he said smiling--"Do not be sad! Have patience! In all the universe, among all the millions and millions of worlds, there is never a pure and unselfish prayer that the great good God does not answer! Be sure of that! Take courage, dear little brother! You will soon be well!"
Fabien stared, half amazed, at the gentle young face that shone upon him with such an expression of hope and tenderness.
"You are very kind," he said--"And you are just a boy yourself,--so you can perhaps guess how it must feel not to be like other boys who can run and leap and walk for miles and miles through the fields and the green shady forests where the birds sing,--and where there is so much to see and think about,--when one is lame one cannot go far you know--and then there is my mother--she is very sad about me,--and it will be hard for her if I live to be a man and still can do nothing to help her . . ."
His weak voice broke, and two large tears filled his eyes and brimmed over, trickling slowly down his pale cheeks. Manuel took his hand and pressed it encouragingly.
"Do not cry!" he said gently--"Believe in what I say--that you will soon be quite well. The Cardinal has prayed for you as only good men CAN pray,--without one selfish thought, in faith and deep humility,- -such prayers draw angels down! Be patient--be brave! Believe in the best and the best will come!"
His words rang out with a sweet convincing clearness, and even Cardinal Bonpre felt a sense of comfort as he listened. The little cripple smiled through his tears.
"Oh, yes," he murmured--"I WILL hope and I WILL believe! I am always sure God is near us, though my mother thinks He must be very far away. Yes,--I will be as brave as I can. You are very good to me,--I know you understand just how I feel, and I thank you very much. I hope you will be happy yourself some day. Good-bye!" Then, turning to Henri and Babette he asked, "Shall we go now?"
Henri's brows were drawn together in a dark frown.
"I suppose so," he replied--"I suppose there's nothing more to be done?" This, with a somewhat sarcastic air of inquiry directed at the Cardinal, who met his bold bright glance, mildly and half compassionately.
"Nothing more my child"--he answered--"Did you expect a miracle? I told you from the first that I was no saint,--I can do no good unless our Lord wills it."
"The Pope believes in miracles"--said Henri, flushing as he spoke with the heat of a sudden angry emotion--"But only those that are performed on his own behalf! HE thinks that God's chief business is to look after HIM!"
A silence ensued,--whether of horror or embarrassment could hardly be determined. The Cardinal said nothing,--Babette trembled a little,--what a dreadful boy Henri really was, she thought!--Madame Patoux shut up her eyes in horror, crossed herself devoutly as against some evil spirit, and was about to speak, when Henri, nothing daunted, threw himself into the breach again, and turned with a fiery vehemence of appeal towards the young and thoughtfullooking Manuel.
"It's just as I say!" he declared hotly--"The Pope is taken as much care of as if he were a peach wrapped in wadding! Was Christ taken care of? No,--He suffered all sorts of hardships and at last was crucified! The Pope shuts himself up in the Vatican with millions and millions of money's worth, while thousands of people around him in Italy alone, are starving and miserable. Christ would not allow such a thing. Christ said 'Sell half that thou hast and give to the poor'--now the Pope doesn't sell half, nor a quarter, nor a bit of a quarter! He takes all he can get and keeps it! And yet God is supposed to work miracles for an old man like that!--Oh I know all about it! Boys read the newspapers as well as grown men!"
"Henri!" gasped Madame Patoux, extending her fat arm and hand with a solemn gesture of reproach--"Henri, thou art mad . . . wicked . . ."
But Henri went on unheedingly, still addressing Manuel.
"Now you are a boy, and I daresay you can read and think,--you are about my age I suppose. And you are left all alone in the world, with nobody to care for you,--well, do you think that is wellarranged ?--And do you think there is any sense in believing in a God who does such a lot of cruel things? And when He won't help us ever so little? How can people be good if they keep on praying and praying, and hoping and hoping, and working and working--and yet nothing comes of it all but trouble and pain and loss . . ." He stopped for sheer lack of breath to go on.
Manuel looked at him quietly, full in the eyes.
"Yes, it is hard!" he said--"Very hard! But it is not God who does any cruel thing. God is Love,--and the Spirit of Love cannot be cruel. It is the people of the world themselves,--the people who injure each other in thought, word and deed,--and who have no spirit of love in them,--these invite sorrow and pain, and rush upon misfortune. Then they blame God for it! Ah, it is easy to blame God!--so much easier than to blame one's self! And if you ask me if it is well for those who suffer cruel things to still believe in God, I say yes, I do think it well,--for it is the only chance they have of finding the right way of life after much wandering in the wrong."
His sweet voice fell on the silence like a soft chime, and Henri, for no particular reason that he could give, felt suddenly abashed. Cardinal Bonpre listened to the words of this strange foundling with a singular emotion,--an emotion too deep to find any outlet in speech. Babette raised her brown trustful eyes, and timidly ventured to put in her opinion.
"Yes"--she said--"I am sure that is true. You see Henri"--with a wise glance at her brother--"you see it is always the same,--when anyone suffers something unfortunate, there is certain to be some cause for it. Now everybody says that if poor Martine had not put Fabien in the cart to save herself the trouble of holding him on her knee, he would not have tumbled out and been hurt. That was the beginning of it. And that was not God's fault. Come Fabien!--we'll take you back now."
At this, Madame Patoux started from her stricken condition of horrified dumbness into speech and action.
"Ah yes, it is indeed time!" she exclaimed--"Enough trouble has been given, I am sure, to Monseigneur, and if such a prayer as his does not reach Heaven, why then there is no Heaven at all, and it is no good bothering ourselves about it. And what things have been said by my son!--MY son!--against the Holy Father! Ah, mon Dieu! The wickedness of it!--The horror! And if thou learnest such blasphemy from newspapers, Henri, thou shalt not read them--"
"Who is to prevent me?" demanded Henri, his eyes sparkling defiantly.
"Hush--hush my child!" interposed the Cardinal quietly "Nothing indeed can prevent thee,--no one can hinder thee from walking the world according to thine own will and direction. Thou must take good and evil as they come, and strive thy best to discern between them-- and if the love of God cannot help thee--well!--perchance the love of thy mother may!"
There was a pause. Henri's head drooped, and quick tears filled his eyes. He said nothing further, but turned to assist Babette in guiding the little Fabien's hesitating steps as he hobbled from the room. The emotional Madame Patoux choked back a rising sob.
"God bless you Monseigneur!" she murmured--"Henri will not forget those words--the lad has a hasty temper, but a good heart--yes, believe me--a good heart--"
"That I am sure of"--responded the Cardinal--"He is quick and intelligent--and seeks to know the truth. If he could feel an asserted 'truth' to be really true, I am confident he would frame his life upon it, and be a good, brave man. Yes--he is a clever lad,--and our modern system of education pushes the brain to a precocity exceeding bodily years,--his impatience and anger only come from puzzling over what he finds it difficult to understand. It is all a puzzle to him--all a puzzle!--as it is to most of us!" He sighed--then added in a lighter tone--"I shall want nothing more at your kindly hands, my daughter. I have decided to leave Rouen for Paris to-day and will take an early afternoon train. Manuel"--and he hesitated a moment--"Manuel will go with me."
Madame was scarcely surprised at this announcement. She had indeed expected it. She glanced at Manuel himself to see how he accepted this sudden change in his fortunes, but he was entirely absorbed in watching Henri and Babette lead their little crippled friend away. After all, there was nothing to be said. The Cardinal was a free agent,--he had a perfect right to befriend a homeless boy and give him sustenance and protection if he chose. He would make, thought Madame, a perfect acolyte, and would look like a young angel in his little white surplice. And so the good woman, deciding in her own mind that such was the simple destiny for which the Cardinal intended him, smiled, murmured something deferential and approving, and hastened from the room, to prepare for Monseigneur, whether he asked for it or not, a dish of her most excellent soup, to strengthen and support him before starting on his journey. And ere four o'clock had chimed from all the towers of the city, the Hotel Poitiers was deprived of its honoured guest,--the Cardinal, accompanied by his foundling, had departed, and the black, smoky, snake-like train had rushed with them through the smiling peace of the Normandy pasture-lands on towards the brilliant "city enthroned in wickedness," which sparkles like a jewel on the borders of the Seine as gloriously as ever Babylon sparkled on the shores of Euphrates. As godless, as hollow to the very core of rottenness, as her sister of ancient days, wanton "Lutetia" shines,--with the ghastly and unnatural lustre of phosphorescent luminance arising from old graves--and as divinely determined as the destruction of the old-time city splendid, is the approaching downfall of the modern capital. To the inhabitants of Rouen, the very name of Paris carries with it a kind of awe,--it excites various emotions of wonder, admiration, longing, curiosity and even fear,--for Paris is a witches' cauldron in which Republicanism, Imperialism, Royalism, Communism and Socialism, are all thrown by the Fates to seethe together in a hellish broth of conflicting elements--and the smoke of it ascends in reeking blasphemy to Heaven. Not from its churchaltars does the cry of "How long, O Lord, how long!" ascend nowadays,--for its priests are more skilled in the use of the witty bon-mot or the polished sneer than in the power of the prophet's appeal,--it is from the Courts of Science that the warning note of terror sounds,--the cold vast courts where reasoning thinkers wander, and learn, and deeply meditate, knowing that all their researches but go to prove the fact that apart from all creed and all forms of creed, Crime carries Punishment as surely as the seed is born with the flower,--thinkers who are fully aware that not all the forces of all mankind, working with herculean insistence to support a Lie, can drive back the storm-cloud of the wrath of that "Unknown Quantity" called God, whose thunders do most terribly declare the truth "with power and great glory." "How long O Lord, how long!" Not long, we think, O friends!--not long now shall we wait for the Divine Pronouncement of the End. Hints of it are in the air,--signs and portents of it are about us in our almost terrific discoveries of the invisible forces of Light and Sound,--we are not given such tremendous powers to play with in our puny fashion for the convenience of making our brief lives easier to live and more interesting,--no, there is some deeper reason,--one, which in our heedless way of dancing over our own Earth-grave, we never dream of. And we go on making our little plans, building our ships and making loud brags of our armies, and our skill, and our prowess both by land and sea, and our amazing importance to ourselves and to others,--which importance has reached such a height at the present day as to make of us a veritable spectacle for Olympian laughter,-- and we draw out our little sums of life from the Eternal exchequer, and add them up and try to obtain the highest interest for them, always forgetting to calculate that in making up the sum total, that mysterious "Unknown Quantity" will have to come in, and (un less it has been taken into due counting from the first) will be a figure likely to swamp the whole banking business. And in this particular phase of speculation and exchange, Paris has long been playing a losing game. So steadily has she lost, in honour, in prestige, in faith, in morals, in justice, in honesty and in cleanly living, that it does not seem possible she can ever retrieve herself. Her men are dissolute,--her women shameless--her youth of both sexes depraved,-- her laws are corrupt--her arts de cadent--her religion dead. What next can be expected of her?--or rather to what extent will Destiny permit her to go before the bolt of destruction falls? "Thus far, and no farther" has ever been the Principle of Nature--and Paris has almost touched the "Thus far."
Sitting quietly in her tidy kitchen near the open window, after the Cardinal's departure, Madame Patoux knitted busily, her thoughts flying faster than her glittering needles. A certain vague impression of solemnity had been left on her mind by the events of the morning,--she could not quite reason out the why or the wherefore of it--and yet--it was a fact that after Monseigneur had gone, she had, when entering the rooms he had vacated, felt a singular sense of awe.
"Almost as if one were in the Cathedral at the ringing of the 'Sanctus'" she murmured under her breath, glancing about timidly at the plain furniture and bare walls. And after putting everything in order, she closed and locked the doors jealously, with a determination that she would not let those rooms to the first chance-comer for a long time,--no, though she might have to lose money by her refusal. And now, as she sat actively employed in knitting socks for Henri, whom she could see sitting with his sister outside on the bench under the house porch, reading or pretending to read, she began to wonder what opinion those two young miscreants had formed in their minds respecting the Cardinal, and also what they thought of the boy who had been taken so suddenly under his protection. She was almost tempted to call Henri and ask him a few questions on the subject,--but she had learnt to value peace and quietness when she could secure those rare blessings at the hands of her children, and when they were employed with a book and visibly out of mischief she thought it wisest to leave them alone. And so she left them in the present instance, pushing her window open as she sat and knitted, for the air was warm and balmy, and the long rays of sunshine streaming across the square were of the hue of a ripe nectarine just gathered, and the delicate mouldings and traceries and statues on the porch of the Cathedral appeared like so many twinings of grey gossamer web glistening in a haze of gold. Now and then neighbours passed, and nodded or called a greeting which Madame Patoux answered cheerily, still knitting vivaciously; and the long shafts of sunshine grew longer, casting deeper shadows as the quarters chimed. All at once there was a cry,--a woman's figure came rushing precipitately across the square,--Madame Patoux sprang up, and her children ran out of the porch as they recognised Martine Doucet.
"Martine! Martine! What is it!" they all cried simultaneously.
Martine, breathless, dishevelled, laughing and sobbing alternately, tried to speak, but could only gesticulate and throw up her hands in a kind of ecstasy, but whether of despair or joy could not be guessed. Madame Patoux shook her by the arm.
"Martine!--speak--what is it!"
Martine made a violent effort.
"Fabien!--Fabien--" she gasped, flinging herself to and fro and still sobbing and laughing.
"Mon Dieu!" cried Madame in horror. "Is the child dead?"
"No, no!--" and Martine again tossed her arms aloft in a kind of frenzy. "No--but look you!--there IS a God! Yes!--we thought He was an invention of the priests--but no--He is a real God after all!--Oh mes enfants!" and she tried to grasp the amazed Henri and Babette in her arms, "You are two of His angels!--you took my boy to the Cardinal--"
The children glanced at each other.
"Yes--yes!" they murmured breathlessly.
"Well! and see what has happened!--See!--Here comes Fabien--!"
And as she spoke exultantly with an excitement that seemed to inspire every nerve of her body, a little figure came running lightly towards them,--the light strong figure of a boy with fair curls flying in the wind, and a face in which the large, grey, astonished eyes flashed with an almost divine joy.
"Mother!--Mother!" he cried.
Madame Patoux felt as though the heavens had suddenly opened to let the angels down. Was this Fabien? Fabien, who had hobbled painfully upon crutches all his life, and had left her house in his usual condition an hour or so ago?--This straight-limbed child, running with the graceful and easy movement of a creature who had never known a day's pain?
"Fabien, is it thou?" almost screamed Henri, "Speak, is it thou?"
"It is I" said Fabien, and he stopped, panting for breath,--then threw his arms round his mother's neck and faced them,--"It is I-- strong and well!--thanks to God and the prayers of the Cardinal!"
For a moment there was a dead silence,--a silence of stupefied amazement unbroken save by the joyful weeping of Martine. Then suddenly a deep-toned bell rang from the topmost tower of Notre Dame--and in the flame-red of the falling sun the doves that make their homes among the pinnacles of the great Cathedral, rose floating in cloudy circles towards the sky. One bell--and then another--yet another!--
"The Angelus!" cried Babette dropping on her knees and folding her hands, "The Angelus!--Mother--Martine--Henri!--Fabien!--the Angelus!"--
Down they all knelt, a devotional group, in the porch through which the good Cardinal had so lately passed, and the bells chimed sweetly and melodiously as Fabien reverently repeated the Angelic Salutation amid responses made with tears and thanksgiving, and neighbours and townfolk hearing of the miracle came hastening to the Hotel Poitiers to enquire into its truth, and pausing as they saw the cluster of kneeling figures in the porch instinctively and without question knelt also,--then as the news spread, group after group came running and gathering together, and dropping on their knees amazed and awestruck, till the broad Square showed but one black mass of a worshipping congregation under the roseate sky, their voices joining in unison with the clear accents of one little happy child; while behind them rose the towers of Notre Dame, and over their heads the white doves flew and the bells of the Angelus rang. And the sun dropped slowly into the west, crimson and glorious like the shining rim of a Sacramental Cup held out and then drawn slowly back again by angel hands within the Veil of Heaven.
VII.
Meanwhile, unconscious of the miracle his prayer had wrought, Cardinal Bonpre and his young charge Manuel, arrived in Paris, and drove from the station direct to a house situated near the Bois du Boulogne, where the Cardinal's niece, Angela Sovrani, only daughter of Prince Sovrani, and herself famous throughout Europe as a painter of the highest promise, had a suite of rooms and studio, reserved for her occasional visits to the French capital. Angela Sovrani was a rare type of her sex,--unlike any other woman in the world, so those who knew her best were wont to declare. Without being actually beautiful, according to the accepted lines and canons of physical perfection, she created around her an effect of beauty, which was dazzling and exciting to a singular degree,--people who came once within the charmed circle of her influence could never forget her, and always spoke of her afterwards as a creature apart;--a "woman of genius,--yes!"--they said, "But something more even than that." And this "something more," was just the inexplicable part of her which governed her whole being, and rendered her so indescribably attractive. And she was not without beauty--or perhaps it should be termed loveliness rather,--of an exquisitely suggestive kind, which provoked the beholder into questioning where and how the glamour of it fell. In her eyes, perhaps, the secret lay,--they were violetgrey in hue, and drowsy-lidded, with long lashes that swept the delicate pale cheeks in a dark golden fringe of shadow, through which the sparkle of vision gleamed,--now warningly, now tenderly,-- and anon, these same half-shut and deep fringed lids would open wide, letting the full brilliance of the soul behind the eyes pour forth its luminance, in flashes of such lightning-like clearness and compelling force, that it was impossible not to recognise something higher than mere woman in the dazzle of that spiritual glory. In figure she was wonderfully slight,--so slight indeed that she suggested a delicate willow-withe such as can be bent and curved with one hand--yet this slightness stood her in good stead, for being united with extreme suppleness, it gave her a grace of movement resembling that of some skimming mountain bird or seaswallow, which flies with amazing swiftness yet seeming slowness. Angela never moved quickly,--no one had ever seen her in what is termed a "rush," or a vulgar hurry. She did everything she had to do without haste, without noise, without announcement or assertion of any kind;--and all that she did was done as perfectly as her ability could warrant. And that ability was very great indeed, and displayed itself in small details as well as large attempts. Whether she merely twisted her golden-brown hair into a knot, or tied a few flowers together and fastened them on her dress with a pearl pin, either thing was perfectly done--without a false line or a discordant hue. Her face, form, voice and colouring were like a chord of music, harmonious,--and hence the impression of satisfaction and composure her presence always gave. In herself she was a creature of remarkable temperament and character;--true womanly in every delicate sentiment, fancy and feeling, but with something of the man-hero in her scorn of petty aims, her delight in noble deeds, her courage, her ambition, her devotion to duty and her unflinching sense of honour. Full of rare perceptions and instinctive knowledge of persons and motives, she could only be deceived and blinded where her deepest affections were concerned, and there she could certainly be fooled and duped as completely as the wisest of us all. Looking at her now as she stood awaiting her uncle's arrival in the drawing-room of her "suite," the windows of which faced the Bois, she expressed to the air and surroundings the personality of a thoughtful, charming young woman,--no more. Her black silk gown, cut simply in the prevailing mode of definitely outlining the figure from throat to hips, and then springing out in pliant folds of trailing drapery, had nothing remarkable about it save its Parisian perfection of fit,--the pale "Gloire de France" rose that rested lightly amongst the old lace at her neck, pinned, yet looking as though it had dropped there merely out of a languid desire to escape from further growing, was her only ornament. Her hair, full of curious lights and shades running from brown to gold and gold to brown again, in a rippling uncertain fashion, clustered thickly over her brow and was caught back at the sides in a loose twist after the style of the Greek vestals,--and her fine, small white hands and taper fingers, so skilled in the use of the artist's brush, looked too tiny and delicate to be of any service save to receive the kisses of a lover's lips,--or to be raised, folded pure and calm, in a child-like appeal to Heaven. Certainly in her fragile appearance she expressed nothing save indefinable charm--no one, studying her physiognomy, would have accredited her with genius, power, and the large conceptions of a Murillo or a Raphael;--yet within the small head lay a marvellous brain--and the delicate body was possessed by a spirit of amazing potency to conjure with. While she watched for the first glimpse of the carriage which was to bring her uncle the Cardinal, whom she loved with a rare and tender devotion, her thoughts were occupied with a letter she had received that morning from Rome,--a letter "writ in choice Italian," which though brief, contained for her some drops of the essence of all the world's sweetness, and was worded thus--
"MY OWN LOVE!--A century seems to have passed away since you left Rome. The hours move slowly without you--they are days,--even years!--but I feel your spirit is always with me! Absence for those who love, is not absence after all! To the soul, time is nothing,-- space is nothing,--and my true and passionate love for you makes an invisible bridge, over which my thoughts run and fly to your sweet presence, carrying their delicious burden of a thousand kisses!--a thousand embraces and blessings to the Angela and angel of my life! From her devoted lover,
"Florian."
Her devoted lover, Florian! Yes; Florian Varillo--her comrade in art, was her lover,--a genius himself, who had recognised HER genius and who bowed before it, conquered and subdued! Florian, the creator of exquisitely delicate landscapes and seascapes, with nymphs and cupids and nereids and sirens all daintily portrayed therein,-- pictures so ethereal and warm and bright in colour that they were called by some of the best Italian critics, the "amoretti" of painting,--he, this wonderful man, had caught her soul and heart by storm, in a few sudden, quickly-whispered words one night when the moon was at the full, hanging high over the gardens of the Pincio,-- and, proud of her security in the love she had won, Angela had risen by leaps and bounds to a magnificence of creative effort and attainment so far beyond him, that old and wise persons, skilled in the wicked ways of the world, would sometimes discourse among themselves in dubious fashion thus: "Is it possible that he is not jealous? He must surely see that her work is superior to his own!" And others would answer, "Oh no! No man was ever known to admit, even in thought, that a woman can do better things in art than himself! If a masculine creature draws a picture on a paving-stone he will assure himself in his own Ego, that it is really much more meritorious simply as 'man's work' than the last triumph of a Rosa Bonheur. Besides, you have to remember that in this case the man is the woman's lover--he could soon kill her genius if he chose. He has simply to desert her,--such an easy thing!--so often done!--and she will paint no more. Women are all alike,--they rest on love,--when that fails, then everything fails, and they drop into old age without a groan." And then perhaps a stray cynic would say, "But Angela Sovrani need not depend on one lover surely?--" and he would get for answer, "No, she need not--but it so happens that she does,"--which to everybody seemed extraordinary, more particularly in Italy, where morals are so lax, that a woman has only to be seen walking alone in the public gardens or streets with one of the opposite sex, and her reputation is gone for ever. It is no use to explain that the man in question is her father, her brother or her uncle,--he simply could not be. He is THE man, the one inevitable. Few Italians (in Italy) believe in the chastity of English women,-- their reasons for doubt being simply because they see the fair and free ones going to parties, theatres and other places of amusement with their friends of the other sex in perfect ease and confidence. And in the case of Angela Sovrani, though she was affianced to Florian Varillo with her father's consent, (reluctantly obtained,) and the knowledge of all the Roman world of society, she saw very little of him,--and that little, never alone. Thus it was very sweet to receive such consoling words as those she had had from him that day--"Time is nothing,--space is nothing,--and my true and passionate love for you makes an invisible bridge over which my thoughts run and fly to your sweet presence!" The letter lay warm in her bosom just under the "Gloire de France" rose; she pressed it tenderly with her little hand now simply for the childish pleasure of hearing the paper rustle, and she smiled dreamily.
"Florian," she murmured half aloud!--"MY Florian!" And she recalled certain lines of verse he had written to her,--for most Italians write verse as easily as they eat maccaroni;--and there are countless rhymes to "amor" in the dulcet Dante-tongue, whereas our rough English can only supply for the word "love" some three or four similar sounds,--which is perhaps a fortunate thing. Angela spoke English and French as easily and fluently as her native Tuscan, and had read the most notable books in all three languages, so she was well aware that of all kinds of human speech in the world there is none so adapted for making love and generally telling lies in, as the "lingua Toscana in bocca Romana." And this particular "lingua" Florian possessed in fullest perfection of sweetness, so far as making love was concerned;--of the telling of lies he was, according to Angela's estimate of him, most nobly ignorant. She had not many idle moments, however, for meditation on her love matters, or for dreamy study of the delicate beginnings of the autumnal tints on the trees of the Bois, for the carriage she had been awaiting soon made its appearance, and bowling rapidly down the road drew up sharply at the door. She had just time to perceive that her uncle had not arrived alone, when he entered,--and with a pretty grace and reverence for his holy calling, she dropped on one knee before him to receive his benediction, which he gave by laying a hand on her soft hair and signing the cross on her brow. After which he raised her and looked at her fondly.
"My dear child!"--he said, tenderly,--and again "My dear child!"
Then he turned towards Manuel, who had followed him and was now standing quietly on the threshold of the apartment.
"Angela, this is one of our Lord's 'little ones,'" he said,--"He is alone in the world, and I have made myself his guardian and protector for the present. You will be kind to him--yes--as kind as if you were his sister, will you not?--for we are all one family in the sight of Heaven, and sorrow and loneliness and want can but strengthen the love which should knit us all together."
Raising her candid eyes, and fixing them on Manuel, Angela smiled. The thoughtful face and pathetic expression of the boy greatly attracted her, and in her heart she secretly wondered where her uncle had found so intelligent and inspired-looking a creature. But one of her UNfeminine attributes was a certain lack of curiosity concerning other people's affairs, and an almost fastidious dislike of asking questions on matters which did not closely concern her. So she contented herself with giving him that smile of hers which in itself expressed all sweetness, and saying gently,--
"You are very welcome! You must try to feel that wherever my uncle is,--that is 'home'."
"I have felt that from the first,"--replied Manuel in his soft musical voice, "I was all alone when my lord the Cardinal found me,- -but with him the world seems full of friends."
Angela looked at him still more attentively; and the fascination of his presence became intensified. She would have liked to continue the conversation, but her uncle was fatigued by his journey, and expressed the desire for an hour's rest. She therefore summoned a servant to show him to the rooms prepared for his reception, whither he went, Manuel attending him,--and when, after a little while, Angela followed to see that all was arranged suitably for his comfort, she found that he had retired to his bed-chamber, and that just outside his door in a little ante-room adjoining, his "waif and stray" was seated, reading. There was something indescribable about the boy even in this reposeful attitude of study,--and Angela observed him for a minute or two, herself unseen. His face reminded her of one of Fra Angelico's seraphs,--the same broad brow, deep eyes and sensitive lips, which seemed to suggest the utterance of wondrous speech or melodious song,--the same golden hair swept back in rich clusters,--the same eager, inspired, yet controlled expression. A curious fluttering of her heart disturbed the girl as she looked--an indefinable dread--a kind of wonder, that almost touched on superstitious awe. Manuel himself, apparently unconscious of her observation, went on reading,--his whole attitude expressing that he was guarding the door to deter anyone from breaking in upon the Cardinal's rest, and Angela at last turned away reluctantly, questioning herself as to the cause of the strange uneasiness which thrilled her mind.
"It is foolish, of course,"--she murmured, "but I feel just as if there were a supernatural presence in the house, . . . however,--I always do have that impression with Uncle Felix, for he is so good and noble-minded,--almost a saint, as everyone says--but to-day there is something else--something quite unusual--"
She re-entered the drawing-room, moving slowly with an abstracted air, and did not at once perceive a visitor in the room,--a portly person in clerical dress, with a somewhat large head and strongly marked features,--a notable character of the time in Paris, known as the Abbe Vergniaud. He had seated himself in a low fauteuil, and was turning over the pages of the month's "Revue de Deux Mondes", humming a little tune under his breath as he did so,--but he rose when he saw Angela, and advanced smilingly to greet her as she stopped short, with a little startled exclamation of surprise at the sight of him.
"Forgive me" he said, with an expressively apologetic gesture,-- "Have I come at an inopportune moment? I saw your uncle arrive, and I was extremely anxious to see him on a little confidential matter-- I ventured to persuade your servant to let me enter--"
"No apologies are necessary, Monsieur l'Abbe" said Angela, quickly, "My uncle Felix is indeed here, but he is tired with his journey and is resting--"
"Yes, I understand!" And Monsieur l'Abbe, showing no intention to take his leave on account of the Cardinal's non-presence, bowed low over the extended hand of "the Sovrani" as she was sometimes called in the world of art, where her name was a bone for envious dogs-inthe -manger to fight over--"But if I might wait a little while--"
"Your business with my uncle is important?" questioned Angela with slightly knitted brows.
"My dear child, all business is important,"--declared the Abbe, with a smile which spread the light of a certain satirical benevolence all over his plump clean-shaven face, "or so we think--we who consider that we have any business,--which is of course a foolish idea,--but one that is universal to human nature. We all imagine we are busy--which is so curious of us! Will you sit here?--Permit me!" And he dexterously arranged a couple of cushions in an arm-chair and placed it near the window. Angela half-reluctantly seated herself, watching the Abbe under the shadow of her long lashes as he sat down opposite to her. "Yes,--the emmets, the flies, the worms and the men, are all of one equality in the absurd belief that they can do things--things that will last. Their persistent self-credulity is astonishing,--considering the advance the world has made in science, and the overwhelming proofs we are always getting of the fact that we are only One of an eternal procession of many mighty civilizations, all of which have been swept away with everything they have ever learnt, into silence,--so that really all we do, or try to do, amounts to doing nothing in the end!"
"That is your creed, I know," said Angela Sovrani with a faint sigh, "But it is a depressing and a wretched one."
"I do not find it so," responded the Abbe, complacently looking at a fine diamond ring that glittered on the little finger of his plump white hand, "It is a creed which impresses upon us the virtue of being happy during the present moment, no matter what the next may bring. Let each man enjoy himself according to his temperament and capabilities. Do not impose bounds upon him--give him his liberty. Let him alone. Do not try to bamboozle him with the idea that there is a God looking after him. So will he be spared much disappointment and useless blasphemy. If he makes his own affairs unpleasant in this world', he will not be able to lift up his hands to the innocent skies, which are only composed of pure ether, and blame an impossible Large Person sitting up there who can have no part in circumstances which are entirely unknown outside the earth's ridiculously small orbit."
He smiled kindly as he spoke, and looked paternally at "the Sovrani," who flushed with a sudden warmth that sent a wave of pale rose over her face, and made her cheeks the colour of the flower she wore.
"How cruel you are!" she said,--"How cold--how didactic! You would give each man his freedom according to habit and temperament,--no matter whether such habit and temperament led to crime or otherwise,--you would impose upon him no creed,--no belief in anything higher than himself,--and yet--you remain in the Church!"
The Abbe laughed softly.
"Chere Sovrani! You are angry--deliciously angry! Impulsively, enthusiastically, beautifully vexed with me! I like to see you so,-- you are a woman of remarkable genius, and yet you are quite a little child in heart,--a positive child, with beliefs and hopes! I should not wonder if you even believed that love itself is eternal!--that most passing of phantoms!--yes--and you exclaim against me because I venture to think for myself? It is appalling that I should think for myself and yet remain in the Church? My dear lady, you might just as well, after unravelling the dirty entanglement of the Dreyfus case, have turned upon our late friend Faure ancl exclaimed 'And yet you remained President!'"
Angela's violet eyes glowed.
"He was not allowed to remain President," she said.
"No, he was not. He died. Certainly! And I know you think he would not have died if he had done his best to clear the character of an innocent man. To women of your type, it always seems as if God--the Large Person up above--stepped in exactly at the right moment. It would really appear as if it were so at times. But such things are mere coincidences."
"I do not believe in coincidences," said Angela decisively, "I do not believe in 'chance' or 'luck', or what you call 'fortuitous' haphazard arrangements of any sort. I think everything is planned by law from the beginning; even to the particular direction in which a grain of dust floats through space. It is all mathematical and exact. And the moving Spirit--the Divine Centre of things, whom I call God,--cannot dislodge or alter one particle of the majestic system without involving the whole in complete catastrophe. It is our mistake to 'chance' things--at least, so I think. And if I exclaim against you and say,--"Why do you remain in the Church?' it is because I cannot understand a man of conscience and intellect outwardly professing one thing while inwardly he means another. Because God will take him in the end at his own interior valuation, not at his outward seeming."
"Uncomfortable, if true," said the Abbe, still smiling. "When one has been at infinite pains all one's life to present a charmingly virtuous and noble aspect to the world, it would be indeed distressing if at the last moment one were obliged to lift the mask . . ."
"Sometimes one is not given the chance to lift it," interposed Angela, "It is torn off ruthlessly by a force greater than one's own. 'Call no man happy till his death,' you know."
"Yes, I know," and the Abbe settled himself in his chair more comfortably;--he loved an argument with "the Sovrani", and was wont to declare that she was the only woman in the world who had ever made him wish to be a good man,--"But that maxim can be taken in two ways. It may mean that no man is happy till his death,--which I most potently believe,--or it may mean that a man is only JUDGED after his death, in which case it cannot be said to affect his happiness, as he is past caring whether people think ill or well of him. Besides, after death it must needs be all right, as every man is so particularly fortunate in his epitaph!"
Angela smiled a little.
"That is witty of you," she said, "but the fact of every man having a kindly-worded epitaph only proves goodness of heart and feeling in his relatives and friends--"
"Or gratitude for a fortune left to them in his will," declared the Abbe gaily, "or a sense of relief that the dear creature has gone and will never come back. Either motive, would, I know, inspire me to write most pathetic verses! Now you bend your charming brows at me,--mea culpa! I have said something outrageous?"
"Not from the point of view at which YOU take life," said Angela quietly, "but I was just then thinking of a cousin of mine,--a very beautiful woman; her husband treated her with every possible sort of what I should term civil cruelty,--polite torture--refined agony. If he had struck her or shot her dead it would have been far kinder. But his conduct was worse than murder. He finally deserted her, and left her penniless to fight her own way through the world. Then he died suddenly, and she forgot all his faults, spoke of him as though he had been a model of goodness, and lives now for his memory, ever mourning his loss. In her case the feeling of regret had nothing to do with money, for he spent all her fortune and left her nothing even of her own. She has to work hard for her living now,--but she loves him and is as true to him as if he were still alive. What do you say to that?"
"I say that the lady in question must be a charming person!" replied the Abbe, "Perfectly charming! But of course she is deceiving herself; and she takes pleasure in the self-deception. She knows that the man had deserted her and was quite unworthy of her devotion;--but she pretends to herself that she does NOT know. And it is charming, of course! But women will do that kind of thing. It is extraordinary,--but they will. They all deceive themselves in matters of love. Even you deceive yourself."
Angela started.
"I?" she exclaimed.
"Yes--you--why not?" And the Abbe treated her to one of his particularly paternal smiles. "You are betrothed to Florian Varillo,--but no man ever had or ever could have all the virtues with which you endow this excellent Florian. He is a delightful creature,--a good artist--unique in his own particular line,--but you think him something much greater than even artist or man--a sort of god, (though the gods themselves were not impeccable) only fit to be idealised. Now, I am not a believer in the gods,--but of course it is delightful to me to meet those who are."
"Signor Varillo needs neither praise nor defence," said Angela with a slight touch of hauteur, "All the world knows what he is."
"Yes, precisely! That is just it,--all the world knows what he is,-- " and the Abbe rubbed his forehead with an air of irritation, "And I am vexing you by my talk, I can see! Well, well!--You must forgive my garrulity;--I admit my faults--I am old--I am a cynic--I talk too much--I have a bad opinion of man, and an equally bad opinion of the Forces that evolved him. By the way, I met that terrible reformer and socialist Aubrey Leigh at the Embassy the other day--the man who is making such a sensation in England with his 'Addresses to the People.' He is quite an optimist, do you know? He believes in everything and everybody,--even in me!"
Angela laughed, and her laughter sweet and low, thrilled the air with a sense of music.
"That is wonderful!" she said gaily,--"Even in you! And how does he manage to believe in you, Monsieur l'Abbe? Do tell me!"
A little frown wrinkled the Abbe's brow.
"Well! in a strange way," he responded. "You know he is a very strange man and believes in very strange things. When I treat humanity as a jest--which is really how it should be treated--he looks at me with a grand air of tolerance, 'Oh, you will progress;' he says, 'You are passing through a phase.' 'My dear sir,' I assure him, 'I have lived in this "phase", as you call it, for forty years. I used to pray to the angels and saints and to all the different little Madonnas that live in different places, till I was twenty. Then I dropped all the pretty heaven-toys at once;--and since then I have believed in nothing--myself, least of all. Now I am sixty--and yet you tell me I am only passing through a phase.' 'Quite so,' he answered me with the utmost coolness, 'Your forty years--or your sixty years, are a Moment merely;--the Moment will pass--and you will find another Moment coming which will explain the one which has just gone. Nothing is simpler.' And when I ask him which will be the best Moment,--the one that goes, or the one that comes--he says that I am making the coming Moment for myself--'which is so satisfactory' he adds with that bright smile of his, 'because of course you will make it pleasant!' 'Il faut que tout homme trouve pour lui meme une possibilite particuliere de vie superieure dans l'humble et inevitable realite quotidienne.' I do not find the 'possibilite particuliere'--but this man assures me it is because I do not trouble to look for it. What do you think about it?" Angela's eyes were full of dreamy musing.
"I think Mr. Leigh's ideas are beautiful," she said, slowly, "I have often heard him talk on the subject of religion--and of art, and of work,--and all he says seems to be the expression of a noble and sincere mind. He is extraordinarily gifted."
"Yes,--and he is becoming rather an alarming personage in England, so I hear,--" returned the Abbe--"He writes books that are distinctly dangerous, because true. He wants to upset shams like our Socialist writer Gys Grandit. Gys Grandit, you know, will never be satisfied till, like Rousseau, he has brought about another French Revolution. He is only a peasant, they say, but he writes with the pen of a prophet. And this Englishman is of the same calibre,--only his work is directed against religious hypocrisies more than social ones. I daresay that is why I always feel so uneasy in his presence!" And Vergniaud laughed lightly. "For the rest, he is a brilliant creature enough, and thoroughly manly. The other evening at the Club that little Vicomte de Lorgne was chattering in his usual offensive manner about women, and Leigh astonished everyone by the way in which he pulled him up. There was almost a very pretty quarrel,--but a stray man happened to mention casually,--that Leigh was considered one of the finest shots in England. After that the dear Vicomte vanished, and did not return."
Angela laughed.
"Poor de Lorgne! Yes--I have heard that Mr. Leigh excels in everything that is distinctly English--riding, shooting, and all that kind of thing. He is not effeminate."
"Few Englishmen are," said the Abbe,--"And yet to my mind there is something not altogether English in this man. He has none of the heavy British mental and physical stolidity. He is strong and muscular certainly,--but also light and supple,--and with that keen, intellectual delicate face of his, he is more of the antique Greek type than like a son of Les Isles Sans-Soleil."
"Sans-Soleil," echoed Angela, "But there is plenty of sunshine in England!"
"Is there? Well, I have been unfortunate,--I have never seen any,--" and the Abbe gave a shrug of half regret, half indifference. "It is very curious the effect that this so brave England has upon me! In crossing to its shores I suffer of course from the mal de mer--then when I arrive exhausted to the white cliffs, it is generally raining--then I take train to London, where it is what is called black fog; and I find all the persons that I meet either with a cold, or going to have a cold, or just recovering from a cold! It is not lively--the very funerals are dull. And you--this is not your experience?"
"No--frankly I cannot say it is," replied Angela, "I have seen rain and fog in Rome that cannot be surpassed for wretchedness anywhere. Italy is far more miserable in cold weather than England. I passed a summer once in England, and it was to me like a glimpse of Paradise. I never saw so many flowers--I never heard so many birds--(you know in Italy we kill all the singing birds and eat them), and I never met so many kind and gentle people."
"Well!--perhaps the religious sects in England are responsible for the general feeling of depression in the English atmosphere," said the Abbe with a light laugh, "They are certainly foggy! The one round Sun of one Creed is unknown to them. I assure you it is best to have one light of faith, even though it be only a magic lantern,- -a toy to amuse the children of this brief life before their everlasting bedtime comes--" He broke off abruptly as a slow step was heard approaching along the passage, and in another moment Cardinal Bonpre entered the room.
"Ah, le bien aime Felix!" cried Vergniaud, hastening to meet him and clasp his outstretched hand, bowing slightly over it as he did so, "I have taken the liberty to wait for you, cher Monseigneur, being anxious to see you--and I understand your stay in Paris will not be long?"
"A few days at most, my dear Abbe",--replied the Cardinal, gently pressing the hand of Vergniaud and smiling kindly. "You are well? But surely I need not ask--you seem to be in the best of health and spirits."
"Ah, my seeming is always excellent," returned the Abbe, "However, I do not fare badly. I have thrown away all hard thinking!"
"And you are happier so?"
"Well, I am not quite sure! There is undoubtedly a pleasure in analysing the perplexities of one's own mind. Still, on the whole, it is perhaps better to enjoy the present hour without any thought at all."
"Like the butterflies!" laughed Angela.
"Yes,--if butterflies DO enjoy their hour,--which I am not at all prepared to admit. In my opinion they are very dissatisfied creatures,--no sooner on one flower than off they go to another. Very like human beings after all! But I imagine they never worry themselves with philosophical or religious questions."
"And do you?" enquired Bonpre, smiling, as he sat down in the easy chair his niece placed for him.
"Not as a rule!--" answered Vergniaud frankly, with a light laugh-- "But I confess I have done a little in that way lately. Some of the new sciences puzzle me,--I am surprised to find how closely they approach to the fulfilment of old prophecies. One is almost inclined to believe that there must be a next world and a future life."
"I think such belief is now placed beyond mere inclination," said the Cardinal--"There is surely no doubt of it."
Vergniaud gave him a quick side-glance of earnest scrutiny.
"With you, perhaps not--" he replied--"But with me,--well!--it is a different matter. However, it is really no use worrying one's self with the question of 'To be, or not to be.' It drove Hamlet mad, just as the knotty point as to whether Hamlet himself was fat or lean nearly killed our hysterical little boy, Catullus Mendes. It's best to leave eternal subjects like God and Shakespeare alone."
He laughed again, but the Cardinal did not smile.
"I do not agree with you, Vergniaud," he said--"I fear it is because we do not think sufficiently for ourselves on the One eternal subject that so much mischief threatens us at the present time. To take gifts and ignore the Giver is surely the blackest ingratitude, yet that is what the greater part of humanity is guilty of in these days. Never was there so much beholding and yet ignoring of the Divine as now. Science is searching for God, and is getting closer to Him every day;--the Church remains stationary and refuses to look out beyond her own pale of thought and conventional discipline. I know,--" and the Cardinal hesitated a moment, "I know I can speak quite plainly to you, for you are what is called a freethinker--yet I doubt whether you are really as free as you imagine!"
The Abbe shrugged his shoulders.
"I imagine nothing!" he declared airily, "Everything is imagined for me nowadays,--and imagination itself is like a flying Geni which overtakes and catches the hair of some elusive Reality and turns its face round, full-shining on an amazed world!"
"A pretty simile!" said Angela Sovrani, smiling.
"Is it not? Almost worthy of Paul Verlaine who was too 'inspired' to keep either his body or his soul clean. Why was I not a poet! Helas!--Fact so much outweighs fancy that it is no longer any use penning a sonnet to one's mistress's eyebrow. One needs to write with thunderbolts in characters of lightning, to express the wonders and discoveries of this age. When I find I can send a message from here to London across space, without wires or any visible means of communication,--and when I am told that probably one of these days I shall be able at will to SEE the person to whom I send the message, reflected in space while the message is being delivered,--I declare myself so perfectly satisfied with the fairy prodigies revealed to me, that I have really no time, and perhaps no inclination to think of any other world than this one."
"You are wrong, then," said the Cardinal, "Very wrong, Vergniaud. To me these discoveries of science, this apparent yielding of invisible forces into human hands, are signs and portents of terror. You remember the line 'the powers of heaven shall be shaken'? Those powers are being shaken now! We cannot hold them back;--they are here, with us;--but they mean much more than mere common utility to our finite selves. They are the material declarations of what is spiritual. They are the scientific proofs that Christ's words to 'THIS generation,' namely, this particular phase of creation,--are true. 'Blessed are they which have not seen and yet believed,' He said;--and many there are who have passed away from us in rapt faith and hope, believing not seeing, and with whom we may rejoice in spirit, knowing that all must be well with them. But now--now we are come upon an age of doubt in the world--doubt which corrodes and kills the divine spirit in man, and therefore we are being forced to SEE that we may believe,--but the seeing is terrible!"
"Why?"
"Because in the very beholding of things we remain blind!" answered the Cardinal, "Our intense selfishness obscures the true light of every fresh advance. We accept new marvels of knowledge, as so much practical use to us, and to the little planet we live on,--but we do not see that they are merely reflections of the Truth from which they emanate. The toy called the biograph, which reflects pictures for us in a dazzling and moving continuity, so that we can see scenes of human life in action, is merely a hint to us that every scene of every life is reflected in a ceaseless moving panorama SOMEWHERE in the Universe, for the beholding of SOMEONE,--yes!-- there must be Someone who so elects to look upon everything, or such possibilities of reflected scenes would not be,--inasmuch as nothing exists without a Cause for existence. The wireless telegraphy is a stupendous warning of the truth that 'from God no secrets are hid', and also of the prophecy of Christ 'there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed'--and, 'whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be revealed in light.' The latter words are almost appalling in their absolute accord with the latest triumphant discoveries of science."
Abbe Vergniaud looked at the Cardinal, and slightly raised his eyebrows in a kind of wondering protest.
"TRES-SAINT Felix!" he murmured, "Are you turning into a mystic? One of those doubtful personages who are seeking to reconcile science with the Church?--"
"Stop!" interposed the Cardinal, raising his hand with an eloquent gesture, "Science is, or should be, the Church!--science is Truth, and Truth is God! God cannot be found anywhere in a lie; and the Church in many ways would make our Divine Redeemer Himself a lie were it not that His words are every day taking fresh meaning, and bringing new and solemn conviction to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear!"
He spoke as if carried beyond himself,--his pale cheeks glowed,--his eyes flashed fire,--and the combined effect of his words and manner was startling to the Abbe, and in a way stupefying to his niece Angela. She had never heard him give utterance to such strong sentiments and she shrank a little within herself, wondering whether as a Cardinal of the Roman Church he had not been too free of speech. She glanced apprehensively at Vergniaud, who however only smiled a little.
"If you should be disposed to express yourself in such terms at the Vatican,--" he began.
The Cardinal relapsed into his usual calm, and met the Abbe's questioning, half cynical glance composedly. "I have many things to speak of at the Vatican," he answered,--"This matter will probably be one of them."
"Then--" But whatever Vergniaud was about to say was interrupted by the entrance of the boy Manuel, who at that moment came into the room and stood beside the Cardinal's chair. The Abbe gave him an upward glance of surprise and admiration.
"Whom have we here?" he exclaimed, "One of your acolytes, Monseigneur?"
"No," replied the Cardinal, his eyes resting on the fair face of the lad with a wistful affection, "A little stray disciple of our Lord,- -to whom I have ventured to offer protection. There is none to question my right to do so, for he is quite alone in the world."
And in a few words he related how he had discovered the boy on the previous night, weeping outside the Cathedral in Rouen. Angela Sovrani listened attentively, her violet eyes darkening and deepening as she heard,--now and then she raised them to look at the youthful waif who stood so quietly while the story of his troubles was told in the gentle and sympathetic way which was the Cardinal's usual manner of speech, and which endeared him so much to all. "And for the present," finished Bonpre, smiling--"he stays with me, and already I have found him skilled in the knowledge of many things,-- he can read Scripture with a most musical and clear emphasis,--and he is a quick scribe, so that he will be valuable to me in more ways than one."
"Ah!" and the Abbe turned himself round in his chair to survey the boy more attentively, "You can read Scripture? But can you understand it? If you can, you are wiser than I am!"
Manuel regarded him straightly.
"Was it not once said in Judaea that "IT IS THE SPIRIT THAT QUICKENETH'?" he asked.
"True!--And from that you would infer . . . ?"
"That when one cannot understand Scripture, it is perhaps for the reason that 'THE LETTER KILLETH, BECAUSE LACKING THE SPIRIT THAT GIVETH LIFE."
The boy spoke gently and with grace and modesty,--but something in the tone of his voice had a strange effect on the cynical temperament of Abbe Vergniaud.
"Here," he mused, "is a lad in whom the principle of faith is strong and pure,--shall I drop the poison of doubt into the open flower of his mind, or leave it uncontaminated?" Aloud he said, kindly,
"You speak well,--you have evidently thought for yourself. Who taught you to recognise 'the Spirit that giveth life'?"
Manuel smiled.
"Does that need teaching?" he asked.
Radiance shone in his eyes,--the look of purity and candour on his young face was infinitely touching to the two men who beheld it,-- the one worn with age and physical languors, the other equally worn in mind, if not in body. In the brief silence which followed,--a silence of unexpressed feeling,--a soft strain of organ-music came floating deliciously towards them,--a delicate thread of grave melody which wove itself in and out the airspaces, murmuring suggestions of tenderness and appeal. Angela smiled, and held up one finger, listening.
"That is Mr. Leigh!" she said, "He is in my studio improvising."
"Happy Mr. Leigh!" said the Abbe with a little malicious twinkle in his eyes, "To be allowed to improvise at all in the studio of the Sovrani!"
Angela flushed, and lifted her fair head with a touch of pride.
"Mr. Leigh is a friend," she said, "He is welcome in the studio always. His criticism of a picture is valuable,--besides--he is a celebrated Englishman!" She laughed, and her eyes flashed.
"Ah! To a celebrated Englishman all things are conceded!" said the Abbe satirically, "Even the right to enter the sanctum of the most exclusive lady in Europe! Is it not a curious thing that the good Britannia appears to stick her helmet on the head, and put her sceptre in the hand of every one of her sons who condescends to soil his boots by walking on foreign soil? With the helmet he defies the gemdarme,--with the sceptre he breaks open every door,--we prostrate ourselves before his face and curse him behind his back,--c'est drole!--yet we are all alike, French, Germans, Austrians, and Italians;--we hate the Englishman, but we black his boots all the same,--which is contemptible of us,--MAIS, QUE FAIRE! He is so overwhelming in sheer impudence! With culture and politeness we might cross swords in courtly duel,--but in the presence of absolute bluff, or what is called 'cheek', we fall flat in sheer dismay! What delicious music! I see that it charms our young friend,--he is fond of music."
"Yes," said Manuel speaking for himself before any question could be put to him, "I love it! It is like the fresh air,--full of breath and life."
"Come then with me," said Angela, "Come into the studio and we will hear it more closely. Dearest uncle," and she knelt for a moment by the Cardinal's chair, "Will you come there also when Monsieur l'Abbe has finished talking with you?"
Cardinal Bonpre's hand rested lovingly on her soft hair.
"Yes, my child, I will come." And in a lower tone he added,--"Do not speak much to Manuel,--he is a strange lad; more fond of silence and prayer than other things,--and if such is his temperament I would rather keep him so."
Angela bowed her head in acquiescence to this bidding,--then rising, left the room with a gentle gesture of invitation to the boy, who at once followed her. As the two disappeared a chill and a darkness seemed to fall upon the air, and the Cardinal sank back among the cushions of his fauteuil with a deep sigh of utter exhaustion. Abbe Vergniaud glanced at him inquisitively.
"You are very tired, I fear?" he said.
"Physically, no,--mentally, yes. Spiritually, I am certainly fatigued to the death."
The Abbe shrugged his shoulders.
"Helas! There is truly much in spiritual matters to engender weariness!" he said.
With a sudden access of energy the Cardinal gripped both arms of his chair and sat upright.
"For God's sake, do not jest," he said earnestly, "Do not jest! We have all been jesting too long, and the time is near when we shall find out the bitter cost of it! Levity--carelessness--doubt and final heresy--I do not mean heresy against the Church, for that is nothing--"
"Nothing!" exclaimed the Abbe, "YOU say this?"
"I say it!" And Bonpre's thin worn features grew transfigured with the fervour of his thought. "I am a priest of the Church--but I am also a man!--with reason, with brain, and with a love of truth;--and I can faithfully say I have an almost jealous honour for my Master-- but I repeat, heresy against the Church is nothing,--it is heresy against Christ which is the crime of the age,--and in that, the very Church is heretic! Heresy against Christ!--Heresy against Christ! A whole system of heresy! 'I never knew you,--depart from me, ye workers of iniquity,' will be our Lord's words at the Last Judgment!"
The Abbe's wonderment increased. He looked down a moment, then looked up, and a quizzical, half-melancholy expression filled his eyes.
"Well, I am very much concerned in all this," he said, "I wanted to have a private talk with you on my own account, principally because I know you to be a good man, while I am a bad one. I have a trouble here,--" and he touched the region of his heart, "which the wise doctors say may end my days at any moment; two years at the utmost is the ultimatum of my life, so I want to know from you, whom I know to be intelligent and honest, whether you believe I am going to another existence,--and if so, what sort of a one you think is in prospect for such a man as I am? Now don't pity me, my dear Bonpre,- -don't pity me!--" and he laughed a little huskily as the Cardinal took his hand and pressed it with a silent sympathy more eloquent than words, "We must all die,--and if I am to go somewhat sooner than I expected, that is nothing to compassionate me for. But there is just a little uncertainty in my mind,--I am not at all sure that death is the end--I wish I could be quite positive of the fact. I was once--quite positive. But science, instead of giving me this absolute comfort has in its later progress upset all my former calculations, and I am afraid I must own that there is indubitably Something Else,--which to my mind seems distinctly disagreeable!"
Though the Abbe spoke lightly, the troubled look remained in his eyes and the Cardinal saw it.
"My dear Vergniaud," he began gently, "I am grieved at what you tell me--"
"No, don't be grieved," interrupted Vergniaud, "because that is not it. Talk to me! Tell me what you truly think. That this life is only a schoolroom where we do our lessons more or less badly?--That death is but the name for another life? Now do not FORCE your faith for me. Tell me your own honest conviction. Do we end?--or do we begin again? Be frank and fair and true; according to the very latest science, remember!--not according to the latest hocus-pocus of twelfth-century mandate issued from Rome. You see how frank I am, and how entirely I go with you. But I am going further than you,--I am bound for the last voyage--so you must not offer me the wrong pass-word to the shore!"
"No, I will give you the right pass-word," said the cardinal, a fervid glow of enthusiasm lighting up his features. "It is CHRIST in all, and through all! Christ only;--Christ, the friend and brother of man;--the only Divine Teacher this world has ever had, or ever will have!"
"You believe in Him really,--truly,--then?" exclaimed the Abbe wonderingly.
"Really--truly, and with all my heart and soul!" responded the Cardinal firmly,--"Surely, you too, believe?"
"No," said the Abbe firmly, "I do not! I would as soon believe that the lad you have just rescued from the streets of Rouen is divine, as that there is any divinity in the Man of Nazareth!"
He rose up as he spoke in a kind of petulance,--then started slightly as he found himself face to face with Manuel. The boy had entered noiselessly and stood for a moment glancing from one priest of the Church to the other. A faint smile was on his face,--his blue eyes were full of light.
"Did you call me, my lord Cardinal?" he asked.
The Cardinal looked up.
"No, my child!"
"I thought I heard you. If you should need me, I am close at hand."
He went away as quietly as he had entered; and the same silence followed his departure as before,--a silence which was only disturbed by the occasional solemn and sweet vibrations of the distant music from the studio.
VIII.
"A strange lad!" said Abbe Vergniaud, abruptly.
"Strange? In what way do you find him so?" asked the Cardinal with a touch of anxiety.
The Abbe knitted his brows perplexedly, and took a short turn up and down the room. Then he laughed.
"Upon my word, I cannot tell you!" he declared, with one of those inimitable gestures common to Frenchmen, a gesture which may mean anything or nothing,--"But he speaks too well, and, surely, thinks too much for his years. Is there nothing further to tell of him save what you have already said? Nothing that you know of him, beyond the plain bare fact of having found him weeping alone outside the doors of the Cathedral?"
"Nothing indeed!" replied the Cardinal bewildered. "What else should there be?"
The Abbe hesitated a moment, and when he spoke again it was in a softer and graver tone. "Forgive me! Of course there could be nothing else with you. You are so different to all other Churchmen I have ever known. Still, the story of your foundling is exceptional;- -you will own that it is somewhat out of the common course of things, for a Cardinal to suddenly constitute himself the protector and guardian of a small tramp--for this boy is nothing else. Now, if it were any other Cardinal-Archbishop than yourself, I should at once say that His Eminence knew exactly where to find the mother of his protege!"
"Vergniaud!" exclaimed the Cardinal.
"Forgive me! I said 'forgive me' as a prelude to my remarks," resumed Vergniaud, "I am talking profanely, sceptically, and cynically,--I am talking precisely as the world talks, and as it always will talk."
"The world may talk itself out of existence, before it can hinder me from doing what I conceive to be my duty," said Felix Bonpre, calmly, "The lad is alone and absolutely friendless,--it is but fitting and right that I should do what I can for him."
Abbe Vergniaud sat down, and for a moment appeared absorbed in thought.
"You are a curious man;" he at length observed, "And a more than curious priest! Here you are, assuming the guardianship of a boy concerning whom you know nothing,--when you might as well have handed him over to one of the orphanages for the poor, or have paid for his care and education with some of the monastic brethren established near Rouen,--but no!--you being eccentric, feel as if you were personally responsible to God for the child, simply because you found him lost and alone, and therefore you have him with you. It is very good of you,--we will call it great of you--but it is not usual. People will say you have a private motive;--you must remember that the world never gives you credit for doing a good action simply for the pure sake of doing it,--'There must be something behind it all,' they say. When the worst cocotte of the age begins to lose her beauty, the prospect is so alarming that she thinks there may be a possible hell, after all, and she straightway becomes charitable and renowned for good works;--precisely in the same way as our famous stage 'stars', knowing their lives to be less clean than the lives of their horses and their dogs, give subscriptions and altar-cloths and organs to the clergy. It is all very amusing!--I assure you I have often laughed at it. It is as if they took Heaven by its private ear in confidence, and said, 'See now, I want to put things straight with you if I can!--and if a few church-ornaments, and candlesticks will pacify you, why, take them and hold your tongue!'"
He paused, but the Cardinal was silent.
"I know," went on the Abbe, "that you think I am indulging in the worst kind of levity to talk in this way. It sounds horrible to you. And you perhaps think I cannot be serious. My dear Saint Felix, there never was a more serious man than I. I would give worlds-- universes--to believe as you do! I have written books of religious discussion,--not because I wanted the notice of the world for them,- -for that I do not care about,--but for the sake of wrestling out the subject for myself, and making my pen my confidant. I tell you I envy the woman who can say her rosary with the simple belief that the Virgin Mary hears and takes delight in all those repetitions. Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to have composed a volume of prayers,--a 'Garland of Flowers'--such as an innocent girl could hold in her hands, and bend her sweet eyes over. It would have been a taste of the sensual-spiritual, or the spiritual-sensual,-- which is the most exquisite of all human sensations."
"There is no taint of sensuality in the purely spiritual," said the Cardinal reprovingly.
"Not for your nature,--no! You have made your body like a transparent scabbard through which the glitter of the soul-sword is almost visible. But I am different. I am so much of a materialist that I like to pull down Heaven to the warm bosom of Earth and make them mingle. You would lift up Earth to Heaven! Ah, that is difficult! Even Christ came down! It is the chief thing I admire in Him, that He 'descended from Heaven and was made Man'. TRES CHER Felix, I shall bewilder you to death with my specious and frivolous reasoning,--and after all, I had much better come to the main fact of what I intended to tell you,--a sort of confession out of church. You know I have already told you I am going to die soon, and that I am a bad man confessedly and hopelessly,--but among other things is this, (and if you can give me any advice upon it I will take it,) that for the last four or five years I have been dodging about to escape being murdered,--not because I particularly mind being murdered, because I probably deserve it,--and one way of exit is as good as another,--but because I want to save the would-be murderer from committing his crime. Is not that a good motive?"
Cardinal Bonpre gazed at him in astonishment. Vergniaud appeared to him in an entirely new light. He had always known him as a careless, cynical-tempered man;--a close thinker,--a clever writer, and a brilliant talker,--and he had been inclined to consider him as a "society" priest,--one of those amiable yet hypocritical personages, who, by the most jesuitical flatteries and studied delicacies of manner, succeed in influencing weak-minded persons of wealth, (especially women) to the end of securing vast sums of money to the Church,--obtaining by these means such rank and favour for themselves as would otherwise never have been granted to them. But now the Abbe's frank admission of his own sins and failings seemed a proof of his inherent sincerity,--and sincerity, whether found in orthodoxy or heterodoxy, always commanded the Cardinal's respect.
"Are you speaking in parables or in grave earnest?" he asked. "Do you really mean that you are shadowed by some would-be assassin? An assassin, too, whom you actually wish to protect?"
"Exactly!" And Vergniaud smiled with the air of one who admits the position to be curious but by no means alarming. "I want to save him from the guillotine; and if he murders me I cannot! It is a question of natural instinct merely. The would-be assassin is my son!"
Cardinal Bonpre raised his clear blue eyes and fixed them full on the Abbe.
"This is a very serious matter," he said gently, "Surely it is best to treat it seriously?"
"Oh, I am serious enough, God knows!" returned Vergniaud, with a heavy but impatient sigh, "I suppose there is, there must be, some terribly exact Mathematician concerned in the working of things, else a man's past sins and failings being done with and over, would not turn up any more. But they DO turn up,--the unseen Mathematician counts every figure;--and of course trouble ensues. My story is simply this;--Some twenty-five years ago I was in Touraine;--I was a priest as I am now--Oh, yes!--the sin is as black as the Church can make it!--and one mid-summer evening I strolled into a certain quaint old church of a certain quaint old town,--I need not name it- -and saw there a girl, as sweet as an apple blossom, kneeling in front of the altar. I watched her,--I see her now!--the late sunlight through the stained glass window fell like a glory on her pretty hair, and on the little white kerchief folded so daintily across her bosom, and on her small hands and the brown rosary that was twisted round her fingers. She was praying, so she told me afterwards, to her guardian angel,--I wonder what that personage was about just then, Bonpre! Anyhow, to her petition came no answer but a devil,--a devil personified in me,--I made her love me,--I tempted her by ever subtle and hellish persuasion I could think of,--I can never even now think of that time without wondering where all the eloquent evil of my tongue came from--and--well!--she never was able to ask the guardian angel any more favours! And I?--I think I loved her for a while,--but no, I am not sure;--I believe there is no such good thing as absolute love in my composition. Anyway, I soon left Touraine, and had almost forgotten her when she wrote to tell me of the birth of her child--a son. I gave her no reply, and then she wrote again,--such a letter!--such words! At the moment they burnt me,--stabbed me--positively hurt me,--and I was not then easily hurt. She swore she would bring the boy up to curse his father,-- and, to put it quite briefly,--she did. She died when he was twenty, and it now appears the lad took an oath by her death-bed that he would never rest till he had killed the man who had dishonoured his mother, and broken her heart, and brought him into the world with a stigma on his name. No filial respect, you see!" And Vergniaud tried to force a smile. "To do the boy justice, he apparently means to keep his oath,--he has not rested; he has been at infinite pains to discover me; he has even been at the trouble to write me a warning letter, and is now in Paris watching me. I, in my turn, take care to protect myself;--I am followed by detectives, and am at enormous pains to guard my life; not for my own sake but for his. An odd complication of circumstances, is it not? I cannot have him arrested because he would at once relate his history, and my name would be ruined. And that would be quite as good a vengeance for him as the other thing. You will admit that it is a very dramatic situation!"
"It is a retribution!" said the Cardinal in a low voice, "And a terrible one!"
"Yes, I suppose it is. I imagined you would consider it in that light," and Vergniaud half closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair languidly, "But here I am, willing to set things as straight as I can, and it really seems impossible to arrange matters. I am to die soon, according to the doctors;--and so I have made my willleaving everything I possess to this ridiculous boy who wishes to kill me; and it is more than probable that he,--considering how he has been brought up and educated--will cast all the money into the dirt, and kick at my grave. But what can I do?"
"Nothing," said the Cardinal, "You can do nothing, Vergniaud! That is the worst of having inflicted a wrong upon the innocent,--you can never by any means retrieve it. You can repent,--and it is probable that your very repentance ensures your forgiveness at a higher tribunal than that of earth's judgment,--but the results of wrong cannot be wiped out or done away with in this life;--they continue to exist, and alas!--often multiply. Even the harsh or unjust word cannot be recalled, and however much we may regret having uttered it, somehow it is never forgotten. But--" here leaning forward, he laid one hand gently on Vergniaud's arm, "My dear friend--my dear brother--you have told me of your sin;--it is a great sin,--but God forbid that I should presume to judge you harshly when our Lord Himself declared that 'He came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance'. It may be that I can find a way to help you. Arrange for me to see this misguided son of yours,--and I will endeavour to find a means of restitution to him and to the memory of his mother before you pass away from us,--if indeed you are to pass away so soon. Under the levity you assume I perceive you have deep feeling on this matter;--you shall not die with a wrong on your soul, Vergniaud!--you shall not if I can prevent it! For there undoubtedly is another life; you must go into it as purely as prayer and penitence can make you."
"I thought," said the Abbe, speaking somewhat unsteadily, "that you might when you heard all, hurl some of Rome's thunderous denunciations upon me . . ."
"What am I, and what is Rome, compared with the Master's own word?" said the Cardinal gently. "If our brothers sin against us seventy times seven we are still to forgive, and they are still our brothers! Denunciations, judgments and condemnations of one another are not any part of our Lord's commands."
Vergniaud rose up and held out his hand.
"Will you take it," he said, "as a pledge that I will faithfully do whatever you may see fitting and right to retrieve the past?--and to clear my son's soul from the thirst of vengeance which is consuming it?"
Cardinal Bonpre clasped the extended hand warmly.
"There is your answer!" he said, with a smile which irradiated his fine countenance with an almost supernatural beauty and tenderness, "You have sinned against Heaven, and you have sinned against the Church and your own calling,--but the greatest sinner can do no more than repent and strive to make amends. For I see you fully know and comprehend the extent of your sin."
"Yes, I know it," and Vergniaud's eyes were clouded and his brows knitted, "I know it only too well! Greater than any fault of Churchdiscipline is a wrong to human life,--and I wronged and betrayed an innocent woman who loved me! Her soul was as sweet as the honey-cup of a flower,--I poisoned it. That was as bad as poisoning the Sacrament! I should have kept it sweet and pure; I should have let the Church go, and been honest! I should have seen to it that the child of my love grew up to honour his father,--not to merely live for the murder of him! Yes!--I know what I should have done--I know what I have not done--and I am afraid I shall always know! Unless I can do something to atone I have a strange feeling that I shall pass from this world to the next--and that the first thing I shall see will be her face! Her face as I saw it when the sunshine made a halo round her hair, and she prayed to her guardian angel."
He shuddered slightly, and his voice died away in a half whisper. The Cardinal pressed his hand again warmly and tenderly.
"Courage, courage!" he said. "It is true we cannot do away with our memories,--but we can try and make them sweet. And who knows how much God may help us in the task? Never forget the words that tell us how 'the angels rejoice more over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons.'"
"Ah!" and the Abbe smiled, recovering somewhat of his usual manner, "And that is so faithfully enforced upon us, is it not? The Churches are all so lenient? And Society is so kind?--so gentle in its estimate of its friends? Our Church, for example, has never persecuted a sinner?--has never tortured an unbeliever? It has been so patient, and so unwearying in searching for stray sheep and bringing them back with love and tenderness and pity to the fold? And Churchmen never say anything which is slanderous or cruel? And we all follow Christ's teaching so accurately? Yes!--Ah well--I wonder! I wonder what will be the end! I wonder why we came into life at all--I wonder why we go! Fortunately for me, by and by, there will be an end of all wondering, and you can write above my tomb, 'Implora pace'! The idea of commencing a new life is to me, horrible,--I prefer 'Nirvana' or nothingness. Never have I read truer words than those of Byron,
'Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know whatever thou hast been,
'Tis something better not to be.'"
"I cannot think that is either true or good philosophy," said the Cardinal, "It is merely the utterance of a disappointed man in a misanthropic mood. There is no 'not to be' in creation. Each morning that lights the world is an expression of 'to be'! And however much we may regret the fact, my dear Vergniaud, we find ourselves in a state of BEING and we must make the best of it,--not the worst. Is that not so?"
His look was gentle and commanding,--his voice soft yet firm,--and the worldly Abbe felt somewhat like a chidden child as he met the gaze of those clear true eyes that were undarkened by any furtive hypocrisies or specious meanings.
"I suppose it is, but unfortunately I have made the worst of it," he answered, "and having made the worst I see no best. Who is that singing?"
He lifted his hand with a gesture of attention as a rich mezzosoprano rang out towards them,--
"Per carita
Mostrami il cielo;
Tulto e un velo,
E non si sa
Dove e il cielo.
Se si sta
Cosi cola,
Non si sa
Se non si va
Ahi me lontano!
Tulto e in vano!
Prendimi in mano
Per carita!"
"It is Angela," said the Cardinal, "She has a wonderfully sweet voice."
"Prendimi in mano,
Per carita!"
murmured Abbe Vergniaud, still listening, "It is like the cry of a lost soul!"
"Or a strayed one," interposed the Cardinal gently, and rising, he took Vergniaud's arm, and leaned upon it with a kindly and familiar grace, an action which implied much more than the mere outward expression of confidence,--"Nothing is utterly lost, my dear friend. 'The very hairs of our head are numbered,'--not a drop of dew escapes to waste,--how much more precious than a drop of dew is the spirit of a man!"
"It is not so unsullied," declared Vergniaud, who loved controversy,--"Personally, I think the dew is more valuable than the soul, because so absolutely clean!"
"You must not bring every line of discussion to a pin's point," said Bonpre smiling, as he walked slowly across the room still leaning on the Abbe's arm. "We can reduce our very selves to the bodiless condition of a dream if we take sufficient pains first to advance a theory, and then to wear it threadbare. Nothing is so deceptive as human reasoning,--nothing so slippery and reversible as what we have decided to call 'logic.' The truest compass of life is spiritual instinct."
"And what of those who have no spiritual instinct?" demanded Vergniaud.
"I do not think there are any such. To us it certainly often seems as if there were masses of human beings whose sole idea of living is to gratify their bodily needs,--but I fancy it is only because we do not know them sufficiently that we judge them thus. Few, if any, are so utterly materialistic as never to have had some fleeting intuition of the Higher existence. They may lack the force to comprehend it, or to follow its teaching,--but in my opinion, the Divine is revealed to all men once at least in their lives."
They had by this time passed out of the drawing-room, and now, ascending three steps, they went through a curtained recess into Angela Sovrani's studio,--a large and lofty apartment made beautiful by the picturesque disorder and charm common to a great artist's surroundings. Here, at a grand piano sat Angela herself, her song finished, her white hands straying idly over the keys,--and near her stood the gentleman whom the Abbe Vergniaud had called "a terrible reformer and Socialist" and who was generally admitted to be something of a remarkable character in Europe. Tall and fair, with very bright flashing eyes, and a wonderfully high bred air of concentrated pride and resolution, united to a grace and courtesy which exhaled from him, so to speak, with his every movement and gesture, he was not a man to pass by without comment, even in a crowd. A peculiar distinctiveness marked him,--out of a marching regiment one would have naturally selected him as the commanding officer, and in any crisis of particular social importance or interest his very appearance would have distinguished him as the leading spirit of the whole. On perceiving the Cardinal he advanced at once to be presented, and as Angela performed the ceremony of introduction he slightly bent one knee, and bowed over the venerable prelate's extended hand with a reverence which had in it something of tenderness. His greeting of Abbe Vergniaud was, while perfectly courteous, not quite so marked by the grace of a strong man's submission.
"Ah, Mr. Leigh! So you have not left Paris as soon as you determined?" queried the Abbe with a smile, "I thought you were bound for Florence in haste?"
"I go to Florence to-morrow," answered Leigh briefly.
"So soon! I am indeed glad not to have missed you," said Cardinal Bonpre cordially. "Angela, my child, let me see what you have been doing. All your canvases are covered, or turned with their faces to the wall;--are we not permitted to look at any of them?"
Angela immediately rose from the piano, and wheeled a large oaken chair with a carved and gilded canopy, into the centre of the studio.
"Well, if you want to see my sketches--and they are only sketches," she said,--"you must come and sit here. Now," as her uncle obeyed her, "you look enthroned in state,--that canopy is just fitted for you, and you are a picture in yourself!--Yes, you are, dearest uncle! And not all the artists in the world could ever do you justice I Monsieur l'Abbe, will you sit just where you please?--And Mr. Leigh, you have seen everything, so it does not matter."
"It matters very much," said Leigh with a smile, "For I want to see everything again. If I may, I will stand here."
And he took up his position close to the Cardinal's chair.
"But where is the boy?" asked Vergniaud, "Where is the foundling of the Cathedral?"
"He left us some minutes ago," said Angela, "He went to your room, uncle."
"Was he pleased with the music?" asked the Cardinal.
"I think he enjoyed every note of it," said Leigh, "A thoughtful lad! He was very silent while I played,--but silence is often the most eloquent appreciation."
"Are we to be silent then over the work of Donna Sovrani?" enquired the Abbe gaily. "Must we not express our admiration?"
"If you have any admiration to express," said Angela carelessly, setting, as she spoke, an easel facing the Cardinal; "but I am afraid you will greatly disapprove of me and condemn all my work this year. I should explain to you first that I am composing a very large picture,--I began it in Rome some three years ago, and it is in my studio there,--but I require a few French types of countenance in order to quite complete it. The sketches I have made here are French types only. They will all be reproduced in the larger canvas- -but they are roughly done just now. This is the first of them. I call it 'A Servant of Christ, at the Madeleine, Paris.'"
And she placed the canvas she held on the easel and stood aside, while all three men looked at it with very different eyes,--one with poignant regret and pain,--the other with a sense of shame,--and the third with a thrill of strong delight in the power of the work, and of triumph in the lesson it gave.
IX.
Low beetling brows,--a sensual, cruel mouth with a loosely projecting under-lip,--eyes that appeared to be furtively watching each other across the thin bridge of nose,--a receding chin and a narrow cranium, combined with an expression which was hypocritically humble, yet sly,--this was the type Angela Sovrani had chosen to delineate, sparing nothing, softening no line, and introducing no redeeming point,--a type mercilessly true to the life; the face of a priest,--"A servant of Christ," as she called him. The title, united with that wicked and repulsive countenance, was a terribly significant suggestion. For some minutes no one spoke,--and the Cardinal was the first to break the silence.
"Angela,--my dear child"--he said, in low, strained tones, "I am sorry you have done this! It is powerful--so powerful that it is painful as well. It cuts me to the heart that you should find it necessary to select such an example of the priesthood, though of course I am not in the secret of your aims--I do not understand your purpose . . ."
He broke off,--and Angela, who had stood silent, looking as though she were lost in a dream, took up his unfinished sentence.
"You do not understand my purpose?--Dearest uncle, I hardly understand it myself! Some force stronger than I am, is urging me to paint the picture I have begun,--some influence more ardent and eager than my own, burns like a fever in me, persuading me to complete the design. You blame me for choosing such an evil type of priest? But there is no question of choice! These faces are ordinary among our priests. At all the churches, Sunday after Sunday I have looked for a good, a noble face;--in vain! For an even commonlyhonest face,--in vain! And my useless search has ended by impressing me with profound sorrow and disgust that so many low specimens of human intellect are selected as servants of our Lord. Do not judge me too severely! I feel that I have a work to do,--and a lesson to give in the work, when done. I may fail;--I may be told that as a woman I have no force, and no ability to make any powerful or lasting impression on this generation;--but at any rate I feel that I must try! If priests of the Church were like you, how different it would all be! But you always forget that you are an exception to the rule,--you do not realise how very exceptional you are! I told you before I showed you this sketch that you would probably disapprove of it and condemn me,--but I really cannot help it. In this matter nothing--not even the ban of the Church itself, can deter me from fulfilling what I have designed to do in my own soul!"
She spoke passionately and with ardour,--and the Cardinal looked at her with something of surprise and trouble. The fire of genius is as he knew, a consuming one,--and he had never entirely realized how completely it filled and dominated this slight feminine creature for whom he felt an almost paternal tenderness. Before he could answer her the Abbe Vergniaud spoke.
"Donna Sovrani is faithful to the truth in her sketch," he said, "therefore, as a lover of truth I do not see, my dear Bonpre, why you should object! If she has,--as she says,--some great aim in view, she must fulfil it in her own way. I quite agree with her in her estimate of the French priests,--they are for the most part despicable-looking persons,--only just a grade higher than their brothers of Italy and Spain. But what would you have? The iron hand of Rome holds them back from progress,--they are speaking and acting lies; and like the stagemimes, have to put on paint and powder to make the lies go down. But when the paint and powder come off, the religious mime is often as ill-looking as the stage one! Donna Sovrani has caught this particular example, before he has had time to put on holy airs and turn up the footlights. What do you think about it, Mr. Leigh?"
"I think, as I have always thought," said Leigh quietly, "that Donna Sovrani is an inspired artist,--and that being inspired it follows that she must carry out her own convictions whether they suit the taste of others or not. 'A Servant of Christ' is a painful truth, boldly declared."
Angela was unmoved by the compliment implied. She only glanced wistfully at the Cardinal, who still sat silent. Then without a word she withdrew the offending sketch from the easel and set another in its place.
"This," she said gently, "is the portrait of an Archbishop. I need not name his diocese. He is very wealthy, and excessively selfish. I call this, 'LORD, _I_ THANK THEE THAT I AM NOT AS OTHER MEN'."
Vergniaud laughed as he looked,--he knew the pictured dignitary well. The smooth countenance, the little eyes comfortably sunken in small rolls of fat, the smug smiling lips, the gross neck and heavy jaw,--marks of high feeding and prosperous living,--and above all the perfectly self-satisfied and mock-pious air of the man,--these points were given with the firm touch of a master's brush, and the Abbe, after studying the picture closely, turned to Angela with a light yet deferential bow.
"Chere Sovrani, you are stronger than ever! Surely you have improved much since you were last in Paris? Your strokes are firmer, your grasp is bolder. Have your French confreres seen your work this year?"
"No," replied Angela, "I am resolved they shall see nothing till my picture is finished."
"May one ask why?"
A flash of disdain passed over the girl's face.
"For a very simple reason! They take my ideas and use them,--and then, when my work is produced they say it is _I_ who have copied from THEM, and that women have no imagination! I have been cheated once or twice in that way,--this time no one has any idea what I am doing."
"No one? Not even Signer Varillo?"
"No," said Angela, smiling a little, "Not even Signor Varillo. I want to surprise him."
"In what way?" asked the Cardinal, rousing himself from his pensive reverie.
Angela blushed.
"By proving that perhaps, after all, a woman can do a great thing in art,--a really great thing!" she said, "Designed greatly, and greatly executed."
"Does he not admit that, knowing you?" asked Aubrey Leigh suggestively.
"Oh, he is most kind and sympathetic to me in my work," explained Angela quickly, vexed to think that she had perhaps implied some little point that was not quite in her beloved one's favour. "But he is like most men,--they have a preconceived idea of women, and of what their place should be in the world--"
"Unchanged since the early phases of civilization, when women were something less valuable than cattle?" said Leigh smiling.
"Oh, the cattle idea is not exploded, by any means!" put in Vergniaud. "In Germany and Switzerland, for example, look at the women who are ground down to toil and hardship there! The cows are infinitely prettier and more preferable, and lead much pleasanter lives. And the men for whom these poor wretched women work, lounge about in cafes all day, smoking and playing dominoes. The barbaric arrangement that a woman should be a man's drudge and chattel is quite satisfactory, I think, to the majority of our sex. It is certainly an odd condition of things that the mothers of men should suffer most from man's cruelty. But it is the work of an all-wise Providence, no doubt; and you, Mr. Leigh, will swear that it is all right!"
"It is all right," said Leigh quietly, "or rather I should say, it WILL be all right,--and it would have been all right long ago, if we had, as Emerson puts it, 'accepted the hint of each new experience.' But that is precisely what we will not do. Woman is the true helpmate of man, and takes a natural joy in being so whenever we will allow it,--whenever we will give her scope for her actions, freedom for her intelligence, and trust for her instincts. But for the present many of us still prefer to play savage,--the complete savage in low life,--the civilized savage in high. The complete savage is found in the dockyard labourer, who makes a woman bear his children and then kicks her to death,--the savage in high life is the man who equally kills the mother of his children, but in another way, namely, by neglect and infidelity, while he treats his numerous mistresses just as the Turk treats the creatures of his harem-- merely as so many pretty soft animals, requiring to be fed with sweets and ornamented with jewels, and then to be cast aside when done with. All pure savagery! But we are slowly evolving from it into something better. A few of us there are, who honour womanhood,- -a few of us believe in women as guiding stars in our troubled sky,- -a few of us would work and climb to greatness for love of the one woman we adore,--would conquer all obstacles,--ay, would die for her if need be, of what is far more difficult, would live for her the life of a hero and martyr! Yes--such things are done,--and men can be found who will do such things--all for a woman's sake."
There was a wonderful passion in his voice,--a deep thrill of earnestness which carried conviction with sweetness. Cardinal Bonpre looked at him with a smile.
"You are perhaps one of those men, Mr. Leigh?" he said.
"I do not know,--I may be," responded Leigh, a flush rising to his cheeks;--"but,--so far, no woman has ever truly loved me, save my mother. But apart from all personalities, I am a great believer in women. The love of a good woman is a most powerful lever to raise man to greatness,--I do not mean by 'good' the goody-goody creature,--no, for that is a sort of woman who does more mischief in her so-called 'blameless' life than a very Delilah. I mean by 'good', a strong, pure, great soul in woman,--sincere, faithful, patient, full of courage and calm,--and with this I maintain she must prove a truly God-given helpmate to man. For we are rough creatures at best,--irritable creatures too!--you see," and here a slight smile lighted up his delicate features, "we really do try more or less to reach heights that are beyond us--we are always fighting for a heaven of some sort, whether we make it of gold, or politics, or art;--it is a 'heaven' or a 'happiness' that we want;-- we would be as gods,--we would scale Olympus,--and sometimes Olympus refuses to be scaled! And then we tumble down, very cross, very sore, very much ruffled;--and it is only a woman who can comfort us then, and by her love and tenderness mend our broken limbs and put salve on our wounded pride."
"Well, then, surely the Church is in a very bad way," said Vergniaud smiling, "Think of the vow of perpetual celibacy!"
"Celibacy cannot do away with woman's help or influence," said Leigh, "There are always mothers and sisters, instead of sweethearts and wives. I am in favour of celibacy for the clergy. I think a minister of Christ should be free to work for and serve Christ only."
"You are quite right, Mr. Leigh;" said the Cardinal, "There is more than enough to do in every day of our lives if we desire to truly follow His commands. But in this present time, alas!--religion is becoming a question of form--not of heart."
"Dearest uncle, if you think that, you will not judge me too severely for my pictures," said Angela quickly, throwing herself on her knees beside him. "Do you not see? It is just because the ministers of Christ are so lax that I have taken to studying them in my way,--which is, I know, not your way;--still, I think we both mean one and the same thing!"
"You are a woman, Angela," said the Cardinal gently, "and as a woman you must be careful of offences--"
"Oh, a woman!" exclaimed Angela, her beautiful eyes flashing with mingled tenderness and scorn, and her whole face lighting up with animation, "Only a woman! SHE must not give a grand lesson to the world! SHE must not, by means of brush or pen, point out to a corrupt generation the way it is going! Why? Because God has created her to be the helpmate of man! Excellent reason! Man is taking a direct straight road to destruction, and she must not stop him by so much as lifting a warning finger! Again, why? Only because she is a woman! But I--were I twenty times a woman, twenty times weaker than I am, and hampered by every sort of convention and usage,--I would express my thoughts somehow, or die in the attempt!"
"BRAVISSIMA!" exclaimed Vergniaud, "Well said, chere Sovrani!--Well said! But I am the mocking demon always, as you know--and I should almost be tempted to say that you WILL die in the attempt! I do not mean that you will die physically,--no, you will probably live to a good old age; people who suffer always do!--but you will die in the allegorical sense. You will grow the stigmata of the Saviour in your hands and feet--you will bear terrible marks of the nails hammered into your flesh by your dearest friends! You will have to wear a crown of thorns, set on your brows no doubt by those whom you most love . . . and the vinegar and gall will be very quickly mixed and offered to you by the whole world of criticism without a moment's hesitation! And will probably have to endure your agony alone,--as nearly everyone runs away from a declared Truth, orif they pause at all, it is only to spit upon it and call it a Lie!"
"Do not prophesy so cruel a fate for the child!" said the Cardinal tenderly, taking Angela's hand and drawing her towards him. "She has a great gift,--I am sure she will use it greatly. And true greatness is always acknowledged in the end."
"Yes, when the author or the artist has been in the grave for a hundred years or more;" said Vergniaud incorrigibly. "I am not sure that it would not be better for Donna Sovrani's happiness to marry the amiable Florian Varillo at once rather than paint her great picture! Do you not agree with me, Mr. Leigh?"
Leigh was turning over an old volume of prints in a desultory and abstracted fashion, but on being addressed, looked up quickly.
"I would rather not presume to give an opinion," he said somewhat coldly, "It is only on the rarest occasions that a woman's life is balanced between love and fame,--and the two gifts are seldom bestowed together. She generally has to choose between them. If she accepts love she is often compelled to forego fame, because she merges herself too closely into the existence of another to stand by her own individuality. If on the other hand, she chooses fame, men are generally afraid of or jealous of her, and leave her to herself. Donna Sovrani, however, is a fortunate exception,--she has secured both fame--and love."
He hesitated a moment before saying the last words, and his brows contracted a little. But Angela did not see the slight cloud of vexation that darkened his eyes,--his words pleased her, and she smiled.
"Ah, Mr. Leigh sees how it is with me!" she said, "He knows what good cause I have to be happy and to do the best work that is in me! It is all to make Florian proud of me!--and he IS proud--and he will be prouder! You must just see this one more sketch taken from life,- -it is the head of one of our most noted surgeons,--I call it for the present 'A Vivisectionist'."
It was a wonderful study,--perhaps the strongest of the three she had shown. It was the portrait of a thin, fine, intellectual face, which in its every line suggested an intense, and almost dreadful curiosity. The brows were high, yet narrow,--the eyes clear and cold, and pitiless in their straight regard,--the lips thin and compressed,--the nose delicate, with thin open nostrils, like those of a trained sleuth-hound on the scent of blood. It was a threequarter -length picture, showing the hand of the man slightly raised, and holding a surgeon's knife,--a wonderful hand, rather small, with fingers that are generally termed "artistic"--and a firm wrist, which Angela had worked at patiently, carefully delineating the practised muscles employed and developed in the vivisectiomst's ghastly business.
Aubrey Leigh stood contemplating it intently.
"I think it is really the finest of all the types," he said presently, "One can grasp that man's character so thoroughly! There is no pity in him,--no sentiment--there is merely an insatiable avidity to break open the great treasure-house of Life by fair means or foul! It is very terrible--but very powerful."
"I know the man," said Abbe Vergniaud, "Did he sit to you willingly?"
"Very willingly indeed!" replied Angela, "He was quite amused when I told him frankly that I wanted him as a type of educated and refined cruelty."
"Oh, these fellows see nothing reprehensible in their work," said Leigh, "And such things go on among them as make the strongest man sick to think of! I know of two cases now in a hospital; the patients are incurable, but the surgeons have given them hope of recovery through an 'operation' which, however, in their cases, will be no 'operation' at all, but simply vivisection. The poor creatures have to die anyhow, it is true, but death might come to them less terribly,--the surgeons, however, will 'operate', and kill them a little more quickly, in order to grasp certain unknown technicalities of their disease."
Angela looked at him with wide-open eyes of pain and amazement.
"Horrible!" she murmured, "Absolutely horrible! Can nothing be done to interfere with, or to stop such cruelty?"
"Nothing, I fear," said Leigh, "I have been abroad some time, studying various 'phases', of its so-called intellectual and scientific life, and have found many of these phases nothing but an output of masked barbarity. The savages of Thibet are more pitiful than the French or Italian vivisectionist,--and the horrors that go on in the laboratories would not be believed if they were told. Would not be believed! They would be flatly denied, even by the men who are engaged in them! And were I to write a plain statement of what I know to be true, and send it to an English journal, it would not be put in, not even in support of the Anti-Vivisection Society, lest it might 'offend' the foreign schools of surgery, and also perhaps lest English schools might prove not altogether free from similar crimes. If, however, by chance, such a statement were published, it would be met with an indignant chorus of denial from every quarter of accusation! How, then, can justice be obtained from what I call the New Inquisition? The old-time Inquisitors tortured their kind for Religion's sake,--the modern ones do it in the name of Science,--but the inhumanity, the callousness, the inborn savage love of cruelty--are all the same in both instances."
Cardinal Bonpre shuddered as he heard.
"Lord Christ, where art thou!" he thought, "Where is Thy spirit of unfailing tenderness and care? How is Thy command of 'love one another' obeyed!" Aloud he said, "Surely such deeds, even in the cause of surgical science, ought not to be permitted in a Christian city?"
"Christian city!" and Vergniaud laughed, "You would not apply that designation to Paris, would you? Paris is hopelessly, riotously pagan;--nay, not even pagan, for the pagans had gods and Paris has none! Neither Jove--nor Jupiter--nor Jehovah! As for the Christ,--He is made the subject of many a public caricature,--yes!--you may see them in the side-streets pasted upon the walls and hoardings!--and also of many a low lampoon;--but He is not accepted as a Teacher, nor even as an Example. His reign is over, in Paris at least!"
"Stop!" said the Cardinal, rising suddenly, "I forbid you, Vergniaud, to tell me these things! If they are true, then shame upon you and upon all the clergy of this unhappy city to stand by and let such disgrace to yourselves, and blasphemy to our Master, exist without protest!"
His tall spare figure assumed a commanding grandeur and authority,-- his pale face flushed and his eyes sparkled--he looked inspired-- superb--a very apostle burning with righteous indignation. His words seemed to have the effect of an electric shock on the Abbe,--he started as though stung by the lash of a whip, and drew himself up haughtily . . . then meeting the Cardinal's straight glance, his head drooped, and he stood mute and rigid. Leigh, though conscious of embarrassment as the witness of a strong reproof administered by one dignitary of the Church to another, yet felt deeply interested in the scene,--Angela shrank back trembling,--and for a few moments which, though so brief, seemed painfully long, there was a dead silence. Then Verginaud spoke in low stifled accents.
"You are perfectly right, Monseigneur! It IS shame to me!--and to the priesthood of France! I am no worse than the rest of my class,-- but I am certainly no better! Your reproach is grand,--and just! I accept it, and ask your pardon!"
He bent one knee, touched the Cardinal's ring with his lips, and then without another word turned and left the room. The Cardinal gazed after his retreating figure like a man in a dream, then he said gently,
"Angela, go after him!--Call him back!--"
But it was too late. Vergniaud had left the house before Angela could overtake him. She came back hurriedly to say so, with a pale face and troubled look. Her uncle patted her kindly on the shoulder.
"Well, well!--It will not hurt him to have seen me angry," he said smiling, "Anger in a just cause is permitted. I seem to have frightened you, Angela? Of a truth I have rather frightened myself! There, we will not talk any more of the evils of Paris. Mr. Leigh perhaps thinks me an intolerant Christian?"
"On the contrary I think you are one of the few 'faithful' that I have ever met," said Leigh, "Of course I am out of it in a way, because I do not belong to the Roman Church. I am supposed--I say 'supposed' advisedly--to be a Church of England man, or to put it more comprehensively, a Protestant, and I certainly am so much of the latter that I protest against all our systems altogether!"
"Is that quite just?" asked Bonpre gently.
"Perhaps not!--but what is one to do? I am not alone in my ideas! One of our English bishops has been latterly deploring the fact that out of a thousand lads in a certain parish nine-hundred-and-ninetynine of them never go to church! Well, what can you expect? I do not blame those nine-hundred and-ninety-nine at all. I am one with them. _I_ never go to church."
"Why?"
"Simply because I never find any touch of the true Spirit of Christ there--and the whole tone of the place makes me feel distinctly unChristian. The nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine youths possibly would sympathise with me. A church is a building more or less beautiful or ugly as the case may be, and in the building there is generally a man who reads prayers in a sing-song tone of voice, and perhaps another man who preaches without eloquence on some text which he utterly fails to see the true symbolical meaning of. There are no Charles Kingsleys nowadays,--if there were, I should call myself a 'Kingsleyite'. But as matters stand I am not moved by the church to feel religious. I would rather sit quietly in the fields and hear the gentle leaves whispering their joys and thanksgivings above my head, than listen to a human creature who has not even the education to comprehend the simplest teachings of nature, daring to assert himself as a teacher of the Divine. My own chief object in life has been and still is to speak on this and similar subjects to the people who are groping after lost Christianity. They need helping, and I want to try in my way to help them."
"Groping after lost Christianity!" echoed the Cardinal, "Those words are a terrible indictment, Mr. Leigh!"
"Yet in your own soul your Eminence admits it to be true," returned Leigh quickly,--"I can see the admission in your eyes,--in the very expression of your face! You feel in yourself that the true spirit of Christ is lacking in all the churches of the present day,--that the sheep are straying for lack of the shepherd, and that the wolf is in the fold! You know it,--you feel it,--you see it!"
Cardinal Bonpre's head drooped.
"God help me and forgive me, I am afraid I do!" he said sorrowfully. "I see the shadow of the storm before it draws nigh,--I feel the terror of the earthquake before it shakes down the edifice! No, the world is not with Christ to-day!--and unhappily it is a fact that Christ's ministers in recent years have done more to sever Him from Humanity than any other power could ever have succeeded in doing. Not by action, but by inertia!--dumbness--lack of protest,--lack of courage! Only a few stray souls stand out firm and fair in the chaos,--only a few!"
"'I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot,--I would thou wert cold or hot! So because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot I will spew thee out of my mouth!'" quoted Leigh, his eyes flashing and his voice trembling with repressed earnestness, "That is the trouble all through! Apathy,--dead, unproductive apathy and laissez-faire!--Ah, I believe there are some of us living now who are destined to see strange and terrible things in this new century!"
"For myself," said the Cardinal slowly, "I think there is not much time left us! I feel a premonition of Divine wrath threatening the world, and when I study the aspect of the times and see the pride, licentiousness, and wealth-worship of men, I cannot but think the days are drawing near when our Master will demand of us account of our service. It is just the same as in the case of the individual wrong-doer, when it seems as if punishment were again and again retarded, and mercy shown,--yet if all benefits, blessings and warnings are unheeded, then at last the bolt falls suddenly and with terrific effect. So with nations--so with churches--so with the world!"
His voice grew feeble, and his eyes were clouded with pain.
"You are fatigued," said Leigh gently, "And I ought not to have stayed so long. I will bid you farewell now. If I am in Rome when you are there, I trust you will permit me to pay my respects to you?"
"It will be a pleasure to see you, my son," answered the Cardinal, pressing his hand and courteously preventing him from making the formal genuflection, "And let me add that it will help me very much to hear from you what progress you make in your intention of working for Christ. For,--when you speak to the people as a teacher, it is in His name, is it not?"
"In His name, and I pray in His spirit," said Leigh, "But not through any church."
The Cardinal sighed, but said no more, and Leigh turned to Angela.
"Good-bye," he said, "I may come and see the picture in Rome?"
"You may indeed," and Angela gave him her hand in frank friendliness, "I shall feel the necessity of your criticism and the value of your opinion."
He looked at her intently for a moment.
"Be of good courage," he then said in a low tone, "'Work out your own salvation', it is the only way! Fulfil the expression of your whole heart and soul and mind, and never heed what opposing forces may do to hinder you. You are so clear-brained, so spiritually organised, that I cannot imagine your doing anything that shall not create a power for good. You are sometimes inclined to be afraid of the largeness of your own conceptions in the picture you are dreaming of,--I can see that,--but do not fear! The higher influences are with you and in you;--give yourself up to them with absolute confidence! Good-bye--God bless you!" He stooped and kissed her hand,--then left the room.
Angela looked after him, and a half sigh escaped her lips unconsciously. The Cardinal watched her with rather a troubled look. After a little silence he said,
"You must pardon me, my child, if I seemed over hasty in my judgment of your work . . ."
"Dearest uncle, do not speak of it!" exclaimed Angela, "You were pained and sorry to see such a 'servant of Christ' as the type I chose,--you could not help expressing your feeling--it was natural . . ."
"Yes, I was vexed,--I own it!--" went on Bonpre, "For I know many priests, poor, patient, simple men, who do their best for our Lord according to their measure and capability,--men who deserve all honour, all love, all respect, for the integrity of their lives,-- still--I am aware that these are in the minority, and that men of the kind your sketch depicts, compose alas!--the majority. There is a frightful preponderance of evil influences in the world! Industry, and commerce, and science have advanced, and yet a noble and upright standard of conduct among men is sadly lacking. Men are seeking for happiness in Materialism, and find nothing but satiety and misery,-- satiety and misery which become so insupportable that very often suicide presents itself as the only way out of such a tangle of wretchedness! Yes, child!--all this is true--and if you think you have a lesson to give which will be useful in these dark days, no one,--I least of all--should presume to hinder you from giving it. Still, remember that the results of work are not with the worker to determine--they rest with God."
"Truly I hope they do," said Angela fervently, "For then all bad work will pass away and only the good and necessary remain."
"That always is the rule," said the Cardinal, "No criticism can kill good work or vivify bad. So be happy, Angela mia! Paint your great picture with courage and hope--I will neither judge nor condemn, and if the world's verdict should be cruel, mine shall be kind!"
He smiled and stroked her soft hair, then taking her arm he leaned upon it affectionately as they left the studio together.
X.
The next day, and the next after that, were passed by the Cardinal in gratifying a certain eagerness shown by his young foundling, Manuel, to see the churches and great public buildings of Paris. The boy had a quiet, straightforward way of expressing his wishes and opinions, and a certain marked individuality in his manner--in fact, so simple and straight were his words, and so much to the point, that they sometimes caused confusion to his hearers. Once or twice he gave offence, as for example, on visiting a great church where there were numerous jewelled relics and priceless treasures of old lace and embroidery, when he said suddenly:
"There is a woman just outside the door, very ill and poor, with two little starving children;--would it not be well to sell some of the jewels here and give her the money?"
The custodian looked amazed, and the attendant priest who was escorting Cardinal Bonpre through the building, frowned.
"The treasures of the Church are not to be sold," he said curtly. "The beggar outside is no doubt a trained hypocrite."
"Christ would not say so," answered Manuel softly,--"He would not, even if He knew her to be a hypocrite, retain anything of value for Himself, if by giving it to her, He could ease her pain and poverty. I cannot understand why the Church should keep jewels."
"That is because you are ignorant," said the priest roughly.
Manuel raised his grave blue eyes and fixed them steadily upon him.
"That may be," he said, "Yet I think it is nowhere written in the Gospel that Christ cared for the world's wealth or the world's possessions. When they are offered to Him did he not say, 'Get thee behind me, Satan'! The only gem he prized was the 'pearl of great price,'--the pure and perfect human soul."
"The Church is the manufactory of those pearls," said the priest, with something between a grin and a sneer.
"Then the Church needs no other jewels" returned Manuel quietly, with a little gesture of his hand, "These glittering baubles you show, are out of place."
The priest glanced him over with angry contempt. Then he said to the Cardinal,
"Your Eminence will have trouble with that boy," he said. "His opinions are heretic."
The Cardinal smiled a little.
"You think so? Nay, there is something of truth in what he says, notwithstanding his simplicity of utterance, which is not perhaps in accordance with convention. I confess that I share his opinions somewhat. Certainly I esteem myself happy that in my far-off diocese there are none of the world's precious things, but only the unprized prayers of the faithful."
The priest said nothing in reply,--but he was conscious of discomfort and uneasiness, and hurried through the rest of his duties with an ill-grace, annoyed, though he knew not why, by the very presence of Manuel. The boy, however, paid no heed to his angry glances, and noted everything in his own quiet meditative way,--a way which was a singularly winning one, graced as it was by an almost scholarly thoughtfulness united to the charm of youth. Once, before a magnificent priest's garment of lace, he paused, and touched the substance lightly.
"See," he said softly, looking wistfully up in the Cardinal's face, "See all the leaves and rosebuds worked in, this by the needle,--and think how many human eyes have strained at it, and grown dull and blind over it! If one could only believe that the poor eyes were comforted at all in the following of the difficult thread!--but no,- -the sunshine must have lessened and the days grown darker and darker, till death came and gently shut up the lids of the tired orbs of earthy vision, and opened those of the soul to Light indeed! This work speaks with a thousand tongues! I can hear them! Torture,- -poverty,--pain,--pitilessness,--long hours,--scant reward,--tired fingers,--weary hearts!--and a priest of Christ wears this to perform Christ's service! Clad in a garment of human suffering, to preach mercy! Is it not strange?"
"You think too deeply, my child," said the Cardinal, moved by the tender pity in Manual's voice, "Nothing is accomplished without pain in this world,--our dear Lord Himself suffered pain."
"True," said Manuel, "But His pain was endured that there might be less of it for others! He asked His children in this world to love one another for His sake--not to grind each other down! Not to make unnecessary hardships for each other! But it seems as if He had asked in vain!"
He was silent after this, and refrained from remark even when, during their visit to Notre Dame, the treasury was unlocked for the Cardinal's inspection, and the relics formerly contained in the now disused "Sainte Chapelle," were shown,--including the fragments of the "crown of thorns," and a nail from the "true cross." The Cardinal was silent too. He had no remark to offer on these obvious "imaginations" of the priesthood. Then they went up together to the platform on the summit of the Cathedral, and looked at the great bell known as the "Bourdon de Notre Dame";--and here they found a little wizened old man sitting carelessly on the edge of a balustrade, in a seemingly very dangerous position, who nodded and smiled familiarly as they appeared. He acted as cicerone of the summit of the North Tower, and was soon at their side explaining volubly all that was of interest.
"Tired,--oh yes, one gets tired!" he admitted, in response to a query from the Cardinal as to whether he did not find his duties fatiguing at his age, "But after all, I like the griffins and dragons and devils' faces up here, better than the griffins and dragons and devils down there,--below on the Boulevards! I call this Heaven, and down there in the streets, Hell. Yes, truly! It is wholesome up here,--the sky seems very near, and the sculptured beasts do no harm. But down in the streets one feels and smells the dirt and danger directly. I sit here all by myself for hours thinking, when no one comes to visit the tower,--for sometimes a whole day passes and no one wishes to ascend. And there is a moral in that, Monseigneur, if one has eyes to see it;--days pass, years, in the world,--and no one wishes to ascend!--to Heaven, I mean!--to go down to Hell is delightful, and everyone is ready for it! It is at night that the platform here is most beautiful,--oh yes, at night it is very fine, Monseigneur!--but it is only madmen and dreamers who call me up in the night hours, yet when they do I never refuse to go with them, for look you, I am a light sleeper and have no wife to bid me keep my bed. Yes,--if the authorities knew that I took anybody up to the tower at night they would probably dismiss me," and he chuckled like an old schoolboy with a sense of his own innate mischief and disobedience, "But you see they do not know! And I learn a great deal from the strange persons who come at night,--much more than from the strange persons who come by day. Now, the last so strange person that came here by night--you would not perhaps believe it, Monseigneur, but it was a priest! Yes," and the old fellow laughed, "a priest who had suddenly found out that the Church was not following its Master! Yes, yes! . . . just fancy killing himself for that!"
"Killing himself!" cried the Cardinal, "What do you mean?"
"You would like to hear the story?--ah, take care, mon ange!" he cried, as he perceived Manuel standing lightly near the brink of the platform, and stretching out his arms towards the city, "Thou art not a bird to fly from that edge in the air! What dost thou see?"
"Paris!" replied the boy in strangely sorrowful accents, turning his young, wistful face towards the Cardinal, his hair blown back in the light wind, "All Paris!"
"Ah!--'tis a fine sight, all Paris!" said the old guide--"one of the finest in the world, to judge by the outside of it. But the inside is a very different matter; and if Paris is not a doomed city, then there is no God, and I know nothing of the Bible. It has got all the old sins in a new shape, and revels in them. And of the story of the priest, if you would hear it;--ah!--that is well!" he said, as Manuel left the giddy verge of the platform where he had been standing, and drew near. "It is safer to be away from that edge, my child! And for the poor priest, it happened in this way,--it was a fair night, and the moon was high--I was dozing off in a chair in my room below, when the bell rang quickly, yet softly. I got up with pleasure, for I said to myself, 'here is an artist or a poet,--one of those persons who are unlike anyone else'--just as I am myself unlike anyone else--'and so we two shall have a pleasant evening.' But when I opened the door there was no one but a priest, and poorlooking even at that; and he was young and pale, and very uneasy in his manner, and he said to me, 'Jean Lapui'--(that is my name)--'let me pass up to the platform.' 'Willingly,' said I, 'if I may go with you.' 'Nay, I would rather be alone,' he answered. 'That may not be,' I told him, 'I am as pleased to see the moonbeams shining on the beasts and devils as any man,--and I shall do you no harm by my company.' Well, he agreed to have me then, and up we went the three hundred and seventy-eight steps,--(it is a long way, Monseigneur;-- )and he mounted quickly, I slowly,--but always keeping my eye upon him. At last we reached this platform, and the moonlight was beautiful, and clear as day. Then my little priest sat down and began to laugh. 'Ha, my Lapui!' he said, 'Is it not droll that this should be all a lie! All this fine building, and all the other fine buildings of the kind in Paris! Strange, my Lapui, is it not, that this Cathedral should be raised to the worship of a God whom no one obeys, or even thinks of obeying! All show, my good Lapui! All to feed priests like me, and keep them going--but God has nothing to do with it--nothing at all, I swear to you!'--'You may be right, mon reverend,' I said, (for I saw he was not in a mood to be argued with)--"Yet truly the Cathedral has not always been a place of holiness. In seventeen ninety-three there was not much of our Lord or the blessed Saints in it.' 'No, you are right, Lapui!' he cried, 'Down came the statue of the Virgin, and up went the statue of Liberty! There was the crimson flare of the Torch of Truth!--and the effigies of the ape Voltaire and the sensualist Rousseau, took the places of St. Peter and St. Paul! Ha!--And they worshipped the goddess of Reason--Reason, impersonated by Maillard the balletdancer ! True to the life, my Lapui!--that kind of worship has lasted in Paris until now!--it goes on still--Reason,--man's idea of Reason,--impersonated by a ballet dancer! Yes,--the shops are full of that goddess and her portraits, Jean Lapui! And the jewellers can hardly turn out sufficient baubles to adorn her shrine!' He laughed again, and I took hold of him by the arm. 'See here, petit pere,' I said, 'I fancy all is not well with you.' 'You are right,' he answered, 'all is very ill!' 'Then will you not go home and to bed?' I asked him. 'Presently--presently;' he said, 'if I may tell you something first!' 'Do so by all means, reverend pere,' said I, and I sat down near him. 'It is just this, Lapui,' and he drew out a crucifix from his breast and looked at it very earnestly, 'I am a priest, as you see; and this symbol represents my faith. My mother told me that to be a priest and to serve God was the highest happiness that could befall a man. I believed it,--and when I look at the stars up there crowding around us in such vast circles,--when I look at all this moonlight and the majesty of creation around me, I believe it still! Up here, it seems there MAY be a God; down there,' and he pointed towards the streets, 'I know there is a devil! But I have discovered that it is no use telling the people about God, because they do not believe in Him. They think I am telling them a lie because it is my metier to tell lies. And also because they think I have neither the sense nor the ability to do anything else. They know they are telling lies themselves all day and every day. Some of them pretend to believe, because they think it best to be on the safe side even by feigning,--and they are the worst hypocrites. It drives me mad, Lapui, to perform Mass for liars! If it were only unbelievers! but liars!--liars! Liars who lie on their death-beds, telling me with mock sighs of penitence that they believe in God when they do not! I had a dream last night--you shall tell me if I was mistaken in it,--it was a dream of this very tower of Notre Dame. I was up here as I am now--and the moonlight was around me as it is now--and I thought that just behind the wing of that third angel's head carved yonder--do you see?' and he got up and made me get up too, and turned me round with his hand on my shoulder--'a white dove had made its resting-place. Is there a white dove there, Lapui? If there is I shall be a happy man and all my griefs will be at an end! Will you go and look--and tell me if there is a white dove nestling there? Then I will say good-night to you and go home.' God forgive me!--I thought to humor him in his fancy, and so I left him to walk those five steps--only five at the utmost- -and see if perhaps among the many doves that fly about the towers, it might not be that a white one, as he said, should have chosen to settle in the place he pointed out to me, 'for,' thought I, 'he will be quiet then and satisfied.' And like a blind fool I went--and when I came back the platform was empty!--Ah, Monseigneur!--he had said good-night indeed, and gone home!"
"You mean that he flung himself from this parapet?" said Bonpre, in a low, horrified tone.
"That was the way of it, Monseigneur," said Lapui commiseratingly,-- "His body was found next day crushed to bits on the pavement below; but somehow no one troubled much about it, or thought he had thrown himself from the tower of Notre Dame. It was said that he had been murdered and thrown out of a window, but nobody knew how or when. Of course I could have spoken, but then I should have got into trouble. And I avoid trouble whenever I can. A very strange thing it is that no one has ever been suspected of leaping from Notre Dame into the next world since Victor Hugo's great story was written. 'It is against the rules,' say the authorities, 'to mount the towers at night.' True, but rules are not always kept. Victor Hugo's 'Quasimodo,' who never lived, is the only person the wiseacres associate with such a deed. And I,--I could tell many a strange story; only it is better to be silent! Life is hard living,--and when a priest of the Church feels there is no God in this world, why what is there left for him except to try and find out if there is in the next?"
"Suicide is not the way to find Heaven," said the Cardinal gravely.
"Maybe not,--maybe not," and the old custodian turned to lead the way down the steps of the tower, "But when the brain is gone all through grief at losing God, it may chance that God sees the conditions of things, and has mercy. Events happen in this world of such a kind as to make anyone who is not a saint, doubt the sense as well as the goodness of the Creator,--of course that is a wicked thing to say, for we make our own evils, no doubt--"
"That is very certain," said the Cardinal, "The unhappy man you have told me of should have trusted God to the end, whether those whom he preached to, believed his message or not. Their conduct was not his business,--his task was to declare, and not to judge."
"Now that is very well put!" and the old man paused on the stairway and looked round approvingly. "Of course that is said as only a wise man could say it, for after all, Christ Himself did not judge any one in any case. He came to save us all, not to punish us."
"Then why does not everyone remember that, and try to save one another rather than to condemn?" asked Manuel suddenly.
They had reached the bottom of the tower stairway, and old Jean Lapui, shading his eyes from the glare of the daylight with one wrinkled hand, looked at the boy with a smile of compassionate interest.
"Why does not everyone remember? Why does not everyone do as He did? Ah, that is a question! You are young, and you will find out many answers to it before you are much older. One fact is sure,--that if everybody did remember Him and lived exactly as He wished, we should have a new Heaven and a new Earth; and I will tell you something else," and the old fellow looked sly and mischievous, "No offence meant--no offence!--but there would be no churches and no priests! Believe me, I speak the truth! But this would be a great happiness; and is not to be our portion yet! Good-day, Monseigneur!--A thousand pardons for my wicked speech! Good-day!"
"Good-day!" responded the Cardinal gently, "Be careful of your night visitors, my friend! Do not for the future leave them alone to plunge into the Infinite without a warning!"
The old man smiled deprecatingly.
"Truly, Monseigneur, I am generally careful. I do not know when I have spoken so freely to anyone as I have to you; for I am generally in a bad humour with all Church dignitaries,--and of course I know you for a Cardinal by your dress, while you might truly be a saint from your manner;--so I should have held my tongue about the flight into the air of the little priest. But you will say nothing, for you are discreet; and even if you did, and I were asked about it, I should know nothing. Oh, yes, I can tell lies as fast as anybody else!--Yes, truly! I do not suppose anyone, not even an Archbishop himself, could surpass me in lying!"
"And are you not ashamed to lie?" asked Bonpre, with an intense vibration of pain in his voice as he put the question.
"Heaven bless you, no, Monseigneur!" replied Lapui cheerfully, "For is not the whole world kept going by lies? Dear me, if we all told the truth there would be an end of everything! I am a philosopher in my way, Monseigneur,--and I assure you that a real serious truth told in Paris without any gloss upon it, would be like an earthquake in the city,--great houses would come down and numbers of people would be killed by it! Good-day, Monseigneur!--Good-day."
And still smiling and chuckling, the custodian of the North tower retired into his den there to await fresh visitors. The Cardinal walked slowly to the corner of the street where his carriage awaited him,--his head bent and his eyes downcast; Manuel stepped lightly along beside him, glancing at his pale face from time to time with a grave and tender compassion. When they were seated in the vehicle and driving homewards the boy spoke gently--
"You grieve too much for others, dear friend! You are now distressed because you have heard the story of one unhappy man who sought to find God by self-destruction, and you are pained also lest another man should lose God altogether by the deliberate telling of lies. All such mistakes and follies of the world weigh heavily on your heart, but they should not do so,--for did not Christ suffer all this for you when He was crucified?"
The Cardinal sighed deeply.
"Yes, my child, but He told us plainly WHY He suffered. It was that we might learn to follow Him, and that there should be less suffering for the future. And surely we have not obeyed Him, or there could not be so much pain and difficulty in the world as there is now."
"If He come again, you think He would be grieved and disappointed in His followers?" queried Manuel softly.
"If He came again, I fear He would not find much of His teaching in any of the creeds founded on His name! If He came again, then indeed might the churches tremble, totter and fall!"
"If He came again," pursued Manuel, still in the same soft, even voice, "how do you think He would come?"
"'Watch ye therefore for ye know not when He cometh,'" murmured the Cardinal,--" My dear child, I think if He came again it would be perhaps in the disguise of one who is poor and friendless 'despised and rejected of men,' as when He first glorified the earth by His presence; and I fear that in such plight He would find Himself, as before, unwelcome."
Manuel made no reply just then, as they had arrived at home. The servant who admitted them told them that Donna Sovrani had a visitor in her studio,--so that the Cardinal and his young attendant went straight to their own apartments.
"Read to me, Manuel," then said Bonpre, seating himself near the window, and looking out dreamily on the rich foliage of the woods and grassy slopes that stretched before him, "Find something in the Gospels that will fit what we have seen to-day. I am tired of all these temples and churches!--these gorgeous tombs and reliquaries; they represent penances and thank-offerings no doubt, but to me they seem useless. A church should not be a shrine for worldly stuff, unless indeed such things are used again for the relief of poverty and suffering; but they are not used; they are simply kept under lock and key and allowed to accumulate,--while human creatures dwelling perhaps quite close to these shrines, are allowed to die of starvation. Did you think this when you spoke to the priest who was offended with you to-day?"
"Yes, I thought it," replied Manuel gently, "But then he said I was a heretic. When one loves God better than the Church is one called a heretic?"
Cardinal Bonpre looked earnestly at the boy's inspired face,--the face of a dreaming angel in its deep earnestness.
"If so, then I am heretic," he answered slowly, "I love the Creator as made manifest to me in His works,--I love Him in every flower which I am privileged to look upon,--I find Him in every art and science,--I worship Him in a temple not made with hands,--His own majestic Universe! Above all churches,--above all formulated creeds and systems I love Him! And as declared in the divine humanity of Christ I believe in, and adore Him! If this makes me unworthy to be His priest and servant then I confess my unworthiness!"
He had spoken these words more to himself than Manuel, and in his fervour had closed his eyes and clasped his hands,--and he almost fancied that a soft touch, light as a falling rose-leaf, had for a second rested on his brow. He looked up quickly, wondering whether it was Manuel who had so touched him,--the boy was certainly near him,--but was already seated with the Testament open ready to read as requested. The Cardinal raised himself in his chair,--a sense of lightness, and freedom, and ease, possessed him,--the hopeless and tired feeling which had a few minutes since weighed him down with an undefinable languor was gone,--and his voice had gained new strength and energy when he once more spoke.
"You have found words of our Lord which will express what we have seen to-day?" he asked.
"Yes," replied Manuel, and he read in a clear vibrating tone, "Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because ye build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous." Here he paused and said, while the Cardinal gazed at him wonderingly, "Is not that true of Paris? There is their great Pantheon where most of their prophets lie,--their poets and their teachers whom they wronged and slandered in their lifetime--"
"My child," interrupted Bonpre gently, "Poets and so-called teachers are not always good men. One named Voltaire, who scoffed at God, and enunciated the doctrine of materialism in France, is buried there."
"Nevertheless he also was a prophet," persisted Manuel, in his quiet, half-childlike, half-scholarly way, "A prophet of evil. He was the incarnation of the future spirit of Paris. He lived as a warning of what was to come,--a warning of the wolves that were ready to descend upon the Master's fold. But Paris was then perhaps in the care of those 'hirelings' who are mentioned here as caring not for the sheep."
He turned a few pages and continued reading.
"'Well hath Esais prophesied of you, hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, TEACHING FOR DOCTRINE THE COMMANDMENTS OF MAN.'"
He emphasised the last few words and looked up at the Cardinal, then he went on.
"'Whosoever will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake the same shall save it.'"
"Yes," said Cardinal Bonpre fervently, "It is all there!--'Whosoever will come after me let him deny himself,' LET HIM DENY HIMSELF! That is the secret of it. Self-denial! And this age is one of selfindulgence. We are on the wrong road, all of us, both Church and laity,--and if the Master should come He will not find us watching, but sleeping."
He broke off, as at that moment a knock came at the door and a servant entered the room bringing him a letter. It was from the Abbe Vergniaud, and ran as follows:--
"TRES CHER MONSIGNEUR! I preach the day after tomorrow at Notre Dame de Lorette, and if you wish to do a favour to a dying man you will come and hear me. I am moved to say things I have never said before, and it is possible I may astonish and perchance scandalise Paris. What inspires me I do not know,--perhaps your well-deserved reproach of the other day--perhaps the beautiful smile of the angel that dwells in Donna Sovrani's eyes,--perhaps the chance meeting with your Rouen foundling on the stairs as I was flying away from your just wrath. He had been gathering roses in the garden, and gave me one with a grace in the giving which made the flower valuable. It still lives and blooms in a glass on my writing-table at which I have been jotting down the notes of what I mean to say. WHAT I MEAN TO SAY! There is more in those words than there seems, if you could but guess all! I shall trust to the day itself for the necessary eloquence. The congregation that assembles at the Lorette is a curious and a mixed one. 'Artistes' of the stage and the cafe chantant are among the worshippers;--dames of rank and fashion who worship the male 'artistes,' and the golden youth of Paris who adore the very points of the shoes of the female ones,--are generally there also. It is altogether what 'perfide Albion,' or Dame Grundee would call a 'fast' audience. And the fact that I have arranged to preach there will draw a still greater mixture and 'faster' quality, as I am, alas!--a fashion in preachers. I pray you to come, or I shall think you have not forgiven me!
"VERGNIAUD."
Cardinal Bonpre folded the letter and put it aside with a curious feeling of compassion for the writer.
"Yes, I will go," he thought, "I have never heard him preach, though I know by report that he is popular. I was told once that he seems to be possessed by a very demon of mockery, and that it is this spirit which makes his attraction for the people; but I hope it is something more than that--I hope--" Here interrupting his meditations he turned to Manuel.
"So you gave the Abbe Vergniaud a rose the other day, my child?"
"Yes," replied Manuel, "He looked sad when I met him,--and sometimes a flower gives pleasure to a person in sorrow."
The Cardinal thought of his own roses far away, and sighed with a sensation of longing and homesickness.
"Flowers are like visible messages from God," he said, "Messages written in all the brightest and loveliest colours! I never gather one without finding out that it has something to say to me."
"There is a legend," said Manuel, "which tells how a poor girl who has lost every human creature she loved on earth, had a rose-tree she was fond of, and every day she found upon it just one bloom. And though she longed to gather the flower for herself she would not do so, but always placed it before the picture of the Christ. And God saw her do this, as He sees everything. At last, quite suddenly she died, and when she found herself in Heaven, there were such crowds and crowds of angels about her that she was bewildered, and could not find her way. All at once she saw a pathway edged with roses before her, and one of the angels said, 'These are all the roses you gave to our Lord on earth, and He has made them into a pathway for you which will lead you straight to those you love!' And so with great joy she followed the windings of the path, seeing her roses blossoming all the way, and she found all those whom she had loved and lost on earth waiting to welcome her at the end!"
"A pretty fancy," said the Cardinal smiling, "And, as not even a thought is wasted, who knows if it might not prove true?"
"Surely the beautiful must be the true always!" said Manuel.
"Not so, my child,--a fair face may hide an evil soul."
"But only for a little while," answered the boy, "The evil soul must leave its impress on the face in time, if life lasts long enough."
"That is quite possible," said Bonpre, "In fact, I think it often happens,--only there are some people who simulate the outward show of goodness and purity perfectly, while inwardly 'they are as ravening wolves,' and they never seem to drop the mask. Others again--" Here he paused and looked anxiously at his young companion, "I wonder what you will be like when you grow up, Manuel!"
"But if I never grow up, what then?" asked Manuel with a smile.
"Never grow up? You mean--"
"I mean if I die," said Manuel, "or pass through what is called dying before I grow up?"
"God forbid!" said the Cardinal gently, "I would have you live--"
"But why," persisted Manuel, "since death is a better life?"
Bonpre looked at him wistfully.
"But if you grow up and are good and great, you may be wanted in the world," he said.
An expression of deep pain swept like a shadow across the boy's fair open brow.
"Oh no!" he said quietly, "the world does not want me! And yet I love the world--not because it is a world, for there are millions upon millions of worlds,--they are as numerous as flowers in a garden--but because it is a sorrowful world,--a mistaken world,--and because all the creatures in it have something of God in them. Yes, I love the world!--but the world does not love me."
He spoke in a tone of gentle pathos, with the resigned and patient air of one who feels the burden of solitude and the sense of miscomprehension. And closing the Testament he held he rested his clasped hands upon it, and for a moment seemed lost in sorrowful reverie.
"I love you," said the Cardinal tenderly, "And I will take care of you as well as I can."
Manuel looked up at him.
"And that will be well indeed, my lord Cardinal!" he said softly, "And you serve a Master who will hereafter say to you, remembering your goodness,--'Verily, in asmuch as ye have done it unto the least of my brethren ye have done it unto Me.'"
He smiled; and the Cardinal meeting his glance wondered whether it was the strong level light of the sinking sun through the windowpane that made such a glory shine upon his face, and gave such a brilliancy to his deep and steadfast eyes.
XI.
Meanwhile, Angela Sovrani was detained in her studio by the fascinating company and bewildering chatter of a charming and very well-known personage in Europe,--a dainty, exquisitely dressed piece of femininity with the figure of a sylph and the complexion of a Romney "Lady Hamilton,"--the Comtesse Sylvie Hermenstein, an AustroHungarian of the prettiest and most bewitching type, who being a thorough bohemienne in spirit, and having a large fortune at her disposal, travelled everywhere, saw everything, and spent great sums of money not only in amusing herself, but in doing good wherever she went. By society in general, she was voted "thoroughly heartless,"-- when as a matter of fact she had too much heart, and gave her "largesse" of sympathy somewhat too indiscriminately. Poor people worshipped her,--the majority of the rich envied her because most of them had ties and she had none. She might have married scores of times, but she took a perverse pleasure in "drawing on" her admirers till they were just on the giddy brink of matrimony,--then darting off altogether she left them bewildered, confused, and not a little angry.
"They tell me I cannot love, cara mia," she was saying now to Angela who sat in pleased silence, studying her form, her colouring, and her animated expression; with all the ardour of an artist who knows how difficult it is to catch the swift and variable flashes of beauty on the face of a pretty woman, who is intelligent as well as personally charming. "They tell me I have no heart at all. Me-- Sylvie!--no heart! Helas!--I am all heart! But to love one of those stupid heavy men, who think that just to pull a moustache and smile is sufficient to make a conquest--ah, no!--not for me! Yet I am now in love!--truly!--ah, you laugh!--" and she laughed herself, shaking her pretty head, adorned with its delicate "creation" in gossamer and feathers, which was supposed to be a hat--"Yes, I am in love with the Marquis Fontenelle! Ah!--le beau Marquis! He is so extraordinary!--so beautiful!--so wicked! It must be that I love him, or why should I trouble myself about him?"
She spread out her tiny gloved hands appealingly, with a delightful little shrug of her shoulders, and again Angela laughed.
"He is good-looking, certainly," she said, "He is very like Miraudin. They might almost be brothers."
"Miraudin, ce cher Miraudin!" exclaimed the Comtesse gaily, "The greatest actor in Europe! Yes, truly!--I go to the theatre to look at him and I almost fancy I am in love with him instead of Fontenelle, till I remember he stage-manages;--ah!--then I shudder!- -and my shudder kills my love! After all it is only his resemblance to the Marquis that causes the love,--and perhaps the shudder!"
"Sylvie, Sylvie!" laughed Angela, "Can you not be serious? What do you mean?"
"I mean what I say," declared Sylvie, "Miraudin used to be the darling of all the sentimental old maids and little school-girls who did not know him off the stage. In Paris, in Rome, in Vienna, in Buda-Pesth--always a conqueror of ignorant women who saw him in his beautiful 'make-up'! Yes, he was perfectly delightful,--this big Miraudin, till he became his own manager and his own leading actor as well! Helas! What it is to be a manager! Do you know? It is to keep a harem like a grand Turk;--and woe betide the woman who joins the company without understanding that she is to be one of the many! The sultana is the 'leading lady'. Poor Miraudin!--he must have many little faggots to feed his flame! Oh, you look so shocked! But the Marquis is just like him,--he also stage-manages."
"In what way?"
"Ah, he has an enormous theatre,--the world! A big stage,--society! The harem is always being replenished! And he plays his part so well! He has what the wise-acrescall 'perverted morals',--they are so charming!--and he will not marry. He says, 'Why give myself to one when I can make so many happy!' And why will not I, Sylvie Hermenstein, be one of those many? Why will I not yield to the embraces of Monsieur le beau Marquis? Not to marry him,--oh, no! so free a bird could not have his wings clipped! And why will I not see the force of this?--"
She stopped, for Angela sprang towards her exclaiming,
"Sylvie! Do you mean to tell me that the Marquis Fontenelle is such a villain?--"
"Tais-toi! Dear little flame of genius, how you blaze!" cried Sylvie, catching her friend by the hand and kissing it, "Do not call Fontenelle a villain--he is too charming!--and he is only like a great many other men. He is a bold and passionate person; I rather like such characters,--and I really am afraid--afraid--" here she hesitated, then resumed, "He loves me for the moment, Angela, and I- -I very much fear I love him for a little longer than that! C'est terrible! He is by no means worthy of it,--no, but what does that matter! We women never count the cost of loving--we simply love! If I see much of him I shall probably sink into the Quartier Latin of love--for there is a Quartier Latin as well as a high class Faubourg in the passion,--I prefer the Faubourg I confess, because it is so high, and respectable, and clean, and grand--but--"
"Sylvie," said Angela determinedly, "You must come away from Paris,- -you must not see this man--"
"That is what I have arranged to do," said Sylvie, her beautiful violet eyes flashing with mirth and malice intermingled, "I am flying from Paris . . . I shall perhaps go to Rome in order to be near you. You are a living safety in a storm,--you are so serene and calm. And then you have a lover who believes in the ideal and perfect sympathy."
Angela smiled,--and Sylvie Hermenstein noted the warm and tender flush of pleasure that spread over her fair face.
"Yes, Florian is an idealist," she said, "There is nothing of the brute in him."
"And you think Fontenelle a brute?" queried Sylvie, "Yes, I suppose he is; but I have sometimes thought that all men are very much alike,--except Florian!" She paused, looking rather dubiously, and with a touch of compassion at Angela, "Well!--you deserve to be happy, child, and I hope you will be! For myself, I am going to run away from Monsieur le Marquis with as much speed as if I had stolen his watch!"
"It is the best thing you can do," said Angela with a little sigh of relief, "I am glad you are resolved."
Comtesse Sylvie rose from her chair and moved about the studio with a pretty air of impatience.
"If his love for me could last," she said, "I might stay! I would love him with truth and passion, and I would so influence him that he should become one of the most brilliant leading men of his time. For he has all the capabilities of genius,--but they are dormant,-- and the joys of self-indulgence appeal to him more strongly than high ambition and attainment. And he could not love any women for more than a week or a month at most,--in which temperament he exactly resembles the celebrated Miraudin. Now I do not care to be loved for a week or a month--I wish to be loved for always,--for always!" she said with emphasis, "Just as your Florian loves you."
Angela's eyes grew soft and pensive.
"Few men are like Florian," she said. Again Sylvie looked at her doubtfully, and there was a moment's silence. Then Sylvie resumed.
"Will you help me to give a little lesson to Monsieur le Marquis, Angela?"
"Willingly, if I can. But how?"
"In this way. It is a little drama! To-morrow is Saturday and you 'receive.' 'Tout Paris', artistic Paris, at any rate, flocks to your studio. Your uncle, the Cardinal Bonpre, is known to be with you, and your visitors will be still more numerous. I have promised Fontenelle to meet him here. I am to give him his answer--"
"To what?" enquired Angela.
"To his proposal."
"Of marriage?"
"Dear me, no!" And Sylvie smiled, but there was a look of pain in her eyes, "He has an idyllic house buried in the Foret St. Germain, and he wants me to take possession . . . you know the rest! He is a villain? Yes--he is like Miraudin, who has a luxurious flat in Paris and sends each lady of his harem there in turn. How angry you look! But, my dear, I am not going to the house in the Foret, and I shall not meet him here. He will come--looking charming as usual, and he will wait for me; but I shall not arrive. All I want you to do for me is to receive him very kindly, talk to him very sweetly, and tell him quite suddenly that I have left Paris."
"What good will that do?" enquired Angela, "Could you not write it to him?"
"Of course I could write it to him but--" Here Sylvie paused and turned away her head. Angela, moved by quick instinct, went to her and put her arm around her waist.
"Now there are tears in your eyes, Sylvie," she said, "You are suffering for this man's heartlessness and cruelty. For it IS heartless,--it is insulting, and selfish, and cruel to offer you nothing but dishonour if he knows you love him."
Sylvie took out a tiny cobweb of a lace handkerchief and dried her tears.
"No, I will not have him called heartless, or cruel," she said, "He is merely one of his class. There are hundreds like him in Paris. Never mind my tears!--they are nothing. There are hundreds of women who would accept his proposals,--and he thinks I must be like them,- -ready to fall into his arms like a ripe peach at a touch! He thinks all I say to him is an assumed affectation of virtue, and that he can easily break down that slight barricade. He tells me I am a charming preacher, but that he could never learn anything from sermons!" She laughed, "Oh, he is incorrigible! But I want you to let him know that for once he is mistaken. Will you? And you shall not have to say even the smallest figment of an untruth,--your news will be quite correct--for I leave Paris to-morrow morning."
She was very quiet now as she spoke--her brilliant eyes were dark with thought, and her delicate face wore a serious, almost melancholy expression.
"Dear Sylvie!" said Angela, kissing her soft cheek, "You really care for this wretched man?"
"I am not sure," she answered with a touch of hesitation in her voice, "I think I do--and yet despise myself for it!--but--who knows what wonders change of air and scene may work! You see, if I go away he will forget at once, and will trouble himself about me no more."
"Are you sure of that?"
Sylvie hesitated.
"Well, no, I cannot be quite certain,--you see no woman has ever avoided him,--it will be quite a new experience for him, and a strange one!" Her laughter rippled out musically on the air. "Positively I do not think he will ever get over it!"
"I begin to understand," said Angela, "You wish to make this callous man of the world realise that a woman may be beautiful, and brilliant, and independent, and yet live a pure, good life amid numerous temptations?"
"Yes,--I wish him to feel that all women are not to be led away by flattery, or even by the desire to be loved, which is the hardest temptation of all to resist! Nothing so hard as that, Angela! Nothing so hard! I have often thought what a contemptible creature Goethe's Gretchen was to allow herself to be tempted to ruin with a box of jewels! Jewels! Worthless baubles! I would not cross the road to look at the biggest diamond in the world! But to be loved! To feel that you are all in all to one man out of the whole world! That would be glorious! That I have never felt--that I shall never know!"
Angela looked at her sympathetically,--what a strange thing it was, she thought, that this pretty creature, with her winsome, bright, bewitching ways, should be craving for love, while she, Angela Sovrani, was elected to the happiness of having the absolute devotion of such an ideal lover as Florian Varillo!
"But I am becoming quite tragic in my remarks," went on Sylvie, resuming her usual gaiety, "Melodramatic, as they say! If I go on in this manner I shall qualify to be the next 'leading lady' to Miraudin! Quelle honneur! Good-bye Angela;--I will not tell you where I am going lest Fontenelle should ask you,--and then you would have to commit yourself to a falsehood,--it is enough to say I have left Paris."
"Shall I see you again soon?" said Angela, holding her by both hands and looking at her anxiously.
"Yes, very soon, before the winter is over at any rate. You sweet, calm, happy Angela! I wonder if anything could ever whip you in a storm!"
"Would you like to see me in a stormy humour?" asked Angela, smiling.
"No, not exactly;--but,--you are TOO quiet,--too secure--too satisfied in your art and your surroundings; and you do not enter at all into the passions and griefs of other people. You are absorbed in your love and your work,--a beautiful existence! Only I hope the gods will not wake you up some day!"
"I am not asleep," said Angela, "nor dreaming."
"Yes you are! You dream of beautiful things,--and the world is full of ugly ones; you dream of love and constancy, and purity,--and the world is full of spite, and hate, and bribery, and wickedness; you have a world of your own,--but Angela, it is a glass world!--in which only the exquisite colours of your own soul are reflected, take care that the pretty globe does not break!--for if it does you will never be able to put it together again! Adieu!"
"Adieu!" and Angela returned her loving embrace with equal affection, "I will announce your departure to the Marquis Fontenelle to-morrow."
"You will? Sweet Angela! And when you hear from me, and know where I am, you will write me a long, long letter and tell me how he looked, and what he said, and whether he seemed sorry or indifferent, or angry, or ashamed--or--"
Before she could finish the sentence the studio door was thrown open, and the servant announced, "Monsieur le Marquis Fontenelle!"
XII.
A moment's flashing glance of half-amused dismay at Angela, and the Comtesse Sylvie had vanished. Passing quickly behind one of the several tall tapestry screens that adorned the studio, she slipped away through a little private door at which Angela's "models" presented themselves, a door which led into the garden and then into the Bois, and making straight for her carriage which was in waiting round the corner, she sprang into it and was rapidly driven away. Meanwhile, Angela Sovrani, rather bewildered by her friend's swift departure, was left alone to face the Marquis, who entered almost on the heels of the servant who announced him, and in one swift survey of the studio saw that the object of his search was not there. Concealing his disappointment, however, under an admirable show of elegant indifference, he advanced towards Angela and saluted her with a courtly old-world grace that very well became his handsome face and figure.
"I must apologise for this intrusion," he said, speaking in deep, soft accents which gave a singular charm to his simplest words, "But--to be quite frank with you--I thought I should find the Comtesse Hermenstein here."
Angela smiled. In her heart she considered the man a social reprobate, but it was impossible to hear him speak, and equally impossible to look at him without a vague sense of pleasure in his company.
"Sylvie was here a moment ago," she answered, still smiling.
The Marquis took one or two quick impulsive steps forward--then checking himself, stopped short, and selecting a chair deliberately sat down.
"I understand!" he said, "She wished to avoid me, and she has done so. Well!--I would not run after her for the world. She must be perfectly free."
Angela looked at him with a somewhat puzzled air. She felt herself in a delicate and awkward position. To be of any use in this affair now seemed quite impossible. Her commission was to have told the Marquis that Sylvie had left Paris, but she could not say that now as Sylvie was still in the city. Was she supposed to know anything about the Marquis's dishonourable proposals to her friend? Surely not! Then what was she to do? She stood hesitating, glancing at the fine, clear-cut, clean-shaven face of Fontenelle, the broad intellectual brows, and the brilliant hazel eyes with their languid, half-satirical expression, and her perplexity increased. Certainly he was a man with a grand manner,--the manner of one of those neverto -be-forgotten haughty and careless aristocrats of the "Reign of Terror" who half redeemed their vicious lives by the bravery with which they faced the guillotine. Attracted, yet repelled by him, Angela had always been,--even when she had known no more of him than is known of a casual acquaintance met at different parties and reunions, but now that she was aware of Sylvie's infatuation, the mingled attraction and revulsion became stronger, and she caught herself wishing fervently that the Marquis would rouse himself from his lethargy of pleasure, and do justice to the capabilities which Nature had evidently endowed him with, if a fine head and noble features are to be taken as exponents of character. Fontenelle himself, meanwhile, leaning carelessly back in the chair he had taken, looked at her with a little quizzical lifting of his eyebrows.
"You are very silent, mademoiselle," he broke out at last, "Have you nothing to say to me?"
At this straight question Angela recovered her equanimity.
"I HAD something to say to you, Marquis," she answered quietly, "but it was to have been said to-morrow."
"To-morrow? Ah, yes! You receive your world of art to-morrow," he said, "and I was to come and meet la Comtesse,--and of course she would not have been here! I felt that by a natural instinct! Something psychological--something occult! I saw her carriage pass my windows up the Champs Elysees,--and I followed in a common fiacre. I seldom ride in a common fiacre, but this time I did so. It was an excitement--la chasse! I saw the little beauty arrive at your door,--I gave her time to pour out all her confidences,--and then I arranged with myself and le bon Dieu to escort her home."
"You arranged well," said Angela, inclined to laugh at his easy audacity, "but le bon Dieu was evidently not of your opinion,--and you must remember that the most excellent arrangements are not always carried out."
"True!" and Fontenelle smiled, "In the case of the fascinating Sylvie, I do not know when I have had so much trouble about a woman. It is interesting, but vexatious. Sometimes I think I shall have to give up and gallop off the hunting-field altogether--"
"Excuse me, Marquis," said Angela coldly, "Sylvie Hermenstein is my friend--pray understand that I cannot allow her to be spoken of in the tone of badinage you are pleased to assume."
He looked up with a curious air of surprise and mock penitence.
"Pardon! But there is no badinage at all about the very serious position in which I find myself," he said, "You, mademoiselle, as a woman, have not the slightest idea of the anxiety and trouble your charming sex gives to ours. That is, of course, when you are charming--which is not always. Now Sylvie, your friend Sylvie--is so distinctly charming that she becomes provoking and irritating. I am sure she has told you I am a terrible villain . . ."
"She has never said so,--never spoken one word against you!" interposed Angela.
"No? That is curious--very curious! But then Sylvie is curious. You see the position is this;--I wish to give her all I am worth in the world, but she will not have it,--I wish to love her, but she will not be loved--"
"Perhaps," said Angela, gaining courage to speak plainly, "Perhaps your love is not linked with honour?"
"Honour?" echoed the Marquis, lifting his finely arched eyebrows, "You mean marriage? No--I confess I am not guilty of so much impudence. For why should the brilliant Sylvie become the Marquise Fontenelle? It would be a most unhappy fate for her, because if there WERE a Marquise Fontenelle, my principles would oblige me to detest her!"
"You would detest your own wife!" said Angela surprised.
"Naturally! It is the fashion. To love one's wife would be petite bourgoisie--nothing more absurd! It is the height of good form to neglect one's wife and adore one's mistress,--the arrangement works perfectly and keeps a man well balanced,--perpetual complaint on one side, perpetual delight on the other."
He laughed, and his eyes twinkled satirically.
"Are you serious?" asked Angela.
"I never was more serious in my life," declared the Marquis emphatically, "With all my heart I wish to make the delicious pink and white Sylvie happy,--I am sure I could succeed in my way. If I should ever allow myself to do such a dull thing as to marry,-- imagine it!--such a dull and altogether prosy thing!--my gardener did it yesterday;--I should of course choose a person with a knowledge of housekeeping and small details,--her happiness it would be quite unnecessary to consider. The maintenance of the establishment, the servants, and the ever increasing train of milliners and dressmakers would be enough to satisfy Madame la Marquise's ambitions. But for Sylvie,--half-fairy, half-angel as she is,--there must be poetry and moonlight, flowers, and romance, and music, and tender nothings,--marriage does not consort with these delights. If you were a little school-girl, dear Donna Sovrani, I should not talk to you in this way,--it would not be proper,--it would savour of Lord Byron, and Maeterlinck, and Heinrich Heine, and various other wicked persons. It would give you what the dear governesses would call 'les idees folles', but being an artist, a great artist, you will understand me. Now, you yourself--you will not marry?"
"I am to be married next year if all is well, to Florian Varillo," said Angela, "Surely you know that?"
"I have heard it, but I will not believe it," said the Marquis airily, "No, no, you will never marry this Florian! Do not tell me of it! You yourself will regret it. It is impossible! You could not submit to matrimonial bondage. If you were plain and awkward I should say to you, marry, and marry quickly, it is the only thing for you!--but being what you are, charming and gifted, why should you be married? For protection? Every man who has once had the honour of meeting you will constitute himself your defender by natural instinct. For respectability? Ah, but marriage is no longer respectable,--the whole estate of matrimony is as full of bribery and corruption as the French War Office."
He threw himself back in his chair and laughed, running one hand through his hair with a provoking manner of indifferent ease and incorrigible lightheartedness.
"I cannot argue with you on the matter," said Angela, rather vexedly, "Your ideas of life never will be mine,--women look at these things differently . . ."
"Poor dear women! Yes!--they do," said the Marquis, "And that is such a pity,--they spoil all the pleasure of their lives. Now, just think for a moment what your friend Sylvie is losing! A devoted, ardent and passionate lover who would spare no pains to make her happy,--who would cherish her tenderly, and make her days a dream of romance! I had planned in my mind such a charming boudoir for Sylvie, all ivory and white satin,--flowers, and a soft warm light falling through the windows,--imagine Sylvie, with that delicate face of hers and white rose skin, a sylph clad in floating lace and drapery, seen in a faint pink hue as of a late sunset! You are an artist, mademoiselle, and you can picture the fairy-like effect! I certainly am not ashamed to say that this exquisite vision occupies my thoughts,--it is a suggestion of beauty and deliciousness in a particularly ugly and irksome world,--but to ask such a dainty creature as Sylvie to be my housekeeeper, and make up the tradesmen's books, I could not,--it would be sheer insolence on my part,--it would be like asking an angel just out of heaven to cut off her wings and go downstairs and cook my dinner!"
"You please yourself and your own fanciful temperament by those arguments," said Angela,--"but they are totally without principle. Oh, why," and raising her eyes, she fixed them on him with an earnest look, "Why will you not understand? Sylvie is good and pure,--why would you persuade her to be otherwise?"
Fontenelle rose and took one or two turns up and down the room before replying.
"I expect you will never comprehend me," he said at last, stopping before Angela, "In fact, I confess sometimes I do not comprehend myself. Of course Sylvie is good and pure--I know that;--I should not be so violently in love with her if she were not--but I do not see that her acceptance of me as a lover would make her anything else than good and pure. Because I know that she would be faithful to me."
"Faithful to you--yes!--while you were faithless to her!" said Angela, with a generous indignation in her voice, "You would expect her to be true while you amused yourself with other women. A onesided arrangement truly!"
The Marquis seemed unmoved.
"Every relation between the sexes is one-sided," he declared, "It is not my fault! The woman gives all to one,--the man gives a little to many. I really am not to blame for falling in with this general course of things. You look very angry with me, Donna Sovrani, and your eyes positively abash me;--you are very loyal to your friend and I admire you for it; but after all, why should you be so hard upon me? I am no worse than Varillo."
Angela started, and her cheeks crimsoned.
"Than Varillo? What do you mean?"
"Well, Varillo has Pon-Pon,--of course she is useful--what he would do without her I am sure I cannot imagine,--still she IS Pon-Pon."
He paused, checked by Angela's expression.
"Please explain yourself, Marquis," she said in cold, calm accents, "I am at a loss to understand you."
Fontenelle glanced at her and saw that her face had grown as pale as it was recently flushed, and that her lips were tightly set; and in a vague way he was sorry to have spoken. But he was secretly chafing at everything,--he was angry that Sylvie had escaped him,--and angrier still that Donna Sovrani should imply by her manner, if not by her words, that she considered him an exceptional villain, when he himself was aware that nearly all the men of his "Cercle" resembled him.
"Pon-Pon is Signor Varillo's model," he said curtly, "I thought you were aware of it. She appears in nearly all his pictures."
Angela breathed again.
"Oh, is that all!" she murmured, and laughed.
Fontenelle opened his eyes a little, amazed at her indifference. What a confiding, unsuspecting creature was this "woman of genius"! This time, however, he was discreet, and kept his thoughts to himself.
"That is all," he said, "But . . . artists have been known to admire their models in more ways than one."
"Yes," said Angela tranquilly, "But Florian is entirely different to most men."
The Marquis was moved to smile, but did not. He merely bowed with a deep and reverential courtesy.
"You have reason to know him best," he said, "and no doubt he deserves your entire confidence. For me--I willingly confess myself a vaurien--but I assure you I am not as bad as I seem. Your friend Sylvie is safe from me."
Angela's eyes lightened,--her mind was greatly relieved.
"You will leave her to herself--" she began.
"Certainly I will leave her to herself. She will not like it, but I will do it! She is going away to-morrow,--I found that out from her maid. Why will you beautiful ladies keep maids? They are always ready to tell a man everything for twenty or forty francs. So simple!--so cheap!--Sylvie's maid is my devoted adherent,--and why?- -not only on account of the francs, but because I have been careful to secure her sweetheart as my valet, and he depends upon me to set him up in business. So you see how easy it is for me to be kept aware of all my fair lady's movements. This is how I learned that she is going away to-morrow--and this is why I came here to-day. She has given me the slip--she has avoided me and now I will avoid her. We shall see the result. I think it will end in a victory for me."
"Never!" said Angela, "You will never win Sylvie to your way of thinking, but it is quite possible she may win you!"
"That would be strange indeed," said the Marquis lightly, "The world is full of wonders, but that would be the most wonderful thing that ever happened in it! Commend me to the fair Comtesse, Mademoiselle, and tell her it is _I_ who am about to leave Paris."
"Where are you going?" asked Angela impulsively.
"Ah, feminine curiosity!" said the Marquis laughing, "How it leaps out like a lightning flash, even through the most rigid virtue! Chere Mademoiselle, where I am going is my own secret, and not even your appealing looks will drag it out of me! But I am in no hurry to go away; I shall not fly off by the midnight train, or the very early one in the morning, as your romantic friend the Comtesse Sylvie will probably do,--I have promised the Abbe Vergniaud to hear him preach on Sunday. I shall listen to a farewell sermon and try to benefit by it,--after that I take a long adieu of France;--be good enough to say to the Countesse with my humblest salutations!"
He bowed low over Angela's hand, and with a few more light parting words took his graceful presence out of the room, and went down the stairs humming a tune as he departed.
After he had gone Angela sat for some minutes in silence thinking. Then she went to her desk and wrote a brief note to the Comtesse as follows:--
"Dear Sylvie: Dismiss your maid. She is in the employ of Fontenelle and details to him all your movements. He has been here for half an hour and tells me that he takes a long adieu of France after Sunday, and he has promised me to LEAVE YOU TO YOURSELF. I am sure you are glad of this. My uncle and I go to Rome next week.
"ANGELA."
She sealed and marked the envelope "private", and ringing the bell for her man-servant requested him to deliver it himself into the hands of the Comtesse Hermenstein. This matter dismissed from her mind she went to a portfolio full of sketches, and turned them over and over till she came to one dainty, small picture entitled, "Phillida et les Roses". It was a study of a woman's nude figure set among branching roses, and was signed "Florian Varillo". Angela looked at it long and earnestly,--all the delicate flesh tints contrasting with the exquisite hues of red and white roses were delineated with wonderful delicacy and precision of touch, and there was a nymph-like grace and modesty about the woman's form and the drooping poise of her head, which was effective yet subtle in suggestion. Was it a portrait of Pon-Pon? Angry with herself Angela tried to put the hateful but insinuating thought away from her,--it was the first slight shadow on the fairness of her love-dream,--and it was like one of those sudden clouds crossing a bright sky which throws a chill and depression over the erstwhile smiling landscape. To doubt Florian seemed like doubting her own existence. She put the "Phillida" picture back in the portfolio and paced slowly to and fro in her studio, considering deeply. Love and Fame--Fame and Love! She had both,--and yet Aubrey Leigh had said such fortune seldom fell to the lot of a woman as to possess the two things together. Might it not be her destiny to lose one of them? If so, which would she prefer to keep? Her whole heart, her whole impulses cried out, "Love"! Her intellect and her ambitious inward soul said, "Fame"! And something higher and greater than either heart, intellect, or soul whispered to her inmost self, "Work!--God bids you do what is in you as completely as you can without asking for a reward of either Love or Fame." "But," she argued with herself, "for a woman Love is so necessary to the completion of life." And the inward monitor replied, "What kind of Love? Ephemeral or immortal? Art is sexless;--good work is eternal, no matter whether it is man or woman who has accomplished it." And then a great sigh broke from Angela's lips as she thought, "Ah, but the world will never own woman's work to be great even if it be so, because men give the verdict, and man's praise is for himself and his own achievements always." "Man's praise," went on the interior voice, "And what of God's final justice? Have you not patience to wait for that, and faith to work for it?" Again Angela sighed; then happening to look up; in the direction of the music-gallery which occupied one end of her studio where the organ was fitted, she saw a fair young face peering down at her over the carved oak railing, and recognised Manuel. She smiled;--her two or three days' knowledge of him had been more than sufficient to win her affection and interest.
"So you are up there!" she said, "Is my uncle sleeping?"
"No," replied Manuel, "he is writing many letters to Rome. Will you come and play to me?"
"Willingly!" and Angela went lightly up the winding steps of the gallery, "But you have been out all day,--are you not tired?"
"No, not now. I WAS weary,--very weary of seeing and hearing so many false things . . ."
"False things?" echoed Angela thoughtfully, as she seated herself at the organ, "What were they?"
"Churches principally," said Manuel quietly; "How sad it is that people should come into those grand buildings looking for Christ and never finding Him!"
"But they are all built for the worship of Christ," said Angela, pressing her small white fingers on the organ keys, and drawing out one or two deep and solemn sounds by way of prelude, "Why should you think He is not in them?"
"He cannot be," answered Manuel, "They are all unlike Him! Remember how poor he was!--He told His followers to despise all riches and worldly praise!--and now see how the very preachers try to obtain notice and reward for declaring His simple word! The churches seem quite empty of Him,--and how empty too must be the hearts and souls of all the poor people who go to such places to be comforted!"
Angela did not reply,--her hands had unconsciously wandered into the mazes of a rich Beethoven voluntary, and the notes, firm, grand, and harmonious, rolled out in the silence with a warm deep tenderness that thrilled the air as with a rhythmic beat of angels' wings. Lost in thought, she scarcely knew what she played, nor how she was playing,--but she was conscious of a sudden and singular exaltation of spirit,--a rush of inward energy that was almost protest,--a force which refused to be checked, and which seemed to fill her to the very finger tips with ardours not her own,--martyrs going to the destroying flames might have felt as she felt then. There was a grave sense of impending sorrow hanging over her, mingled with a strong and prayerful resolve to overcome whatever threatened her soul's peace,--and she played on and on, listening to the rushing waves of sound which she herself evoked, and almost losing herself in a trance of thought and vision. And in this dreamy, supersensitive condition, she imagined that even Manuel's face fair and innocent as it was, grew still more beautiful,--a light, not of the sun's making, seemed to dwell like an aureole in his clustering hair and in his earnest eyes,--and a smile sweeter than any she had ever seen, seemed to tremble on his lips as she looked at him.
"You are thinking beautiful things," he said gently, "And they are all in the music. Shall I tell you about them?"
She nodded assent, while her fingers, softly pressing out the last chord of Beethoven's music, wandered of their own will into the melancholy pathos of a Schubert "Reverie."
"You are thinking of the wonderful plan of the world," he said,--"Of all the fair and glorious things God has made for those who love Him! Of the splendour of Faith and Hope and Courage,--of the soul's divine origin and responsibility,--and all the joy of being able to say to the Creator of the whole universe, 'Our Father!' You are thinking--because you know--that not a note of the music you are playing now fails to reach the eternal spheres,--echoing away from your touch, it goes straight to its mark,--sent with the soul's expression of love and gratitude, it flies to the centre of the soul's worship. Not a pulsation of true harmony is lost! You are thinking how grand it is to live a sweet and unsullied life, full of prayer and endeavour, keeping a spirit white and clean as the light itself, a spirit dwelling on the verge of earth but always ready to fly heavenward!--You are thinking that no earthly reward, no earthly love, no earthly happiness, though good in itself, can ever give you such perfect peace and joy as is found in loving, serving, and obeying God, and suffering His will to be entirely worked in you!"
Angela listened, deeply moved--her heart throbbed quickly,--how wonderfully the boy expressed himself!--with what sweetness, gentleness, and persuasion! She would have ceased playing, but that something imperative urged her to go on,--and Manuel's soft voice thrilled her strangely when he spoke again, saying--
"You know now--because your wise men are beginning to prove it--that you can in very truth send a message to heaven."
"To heaven!" murmured Angela, "That is a long way! We know we can send messages in a flash of lightfrom one part of the world to another--but then there must be people to receive them--"
"And heaven is composed of millions of worlds," said Manuel, "'In my Father's house are many mansions!" And from all worlds to all worlds--from mansion to mansion, the messages flash! And there are those who receive them, with such directness as can admit of no error! And your wise men might have known this long ago if they had believed their Master's word, 'Whatsoever is whispered in secret shall be proclaimed on the housetops.' But you will all find out soon that it is true, and that everything you say, and that every prayer you utter God hears."
"My mother is in heaven," said Angela wistfully, "I wish I could send her a message!"
"Your very wish has reached her now!" said Manuel, "How is it possible that you in the spirit could ardently wish to communicate with one so beloved and she not know it! Love would be no use then, and there would be a grave flaw in God's perfect creation."
Angela ceased playing, and turned round to face the young speaker.
"Then you think we never lose those we love? And that they see us and hear us always?"
"They must do so," said Manuel, "otherwise there would be cruelty in creating the grace of love at all. But God Himself is Love. Those who love truly can never be parted,--death has no power over their souls. If one is on earth and one in heaven, what does it matter? If they were in separate countries of the world they could hear news of each other from time to time,--and so they can when apparent death has divided them."
"How?" asked Angela with quick interest.
"Your wise men must tell you," said Manuel, with a grave little smile, "I know no more than what Christ has said,--and He told us plainly that not even a sparrow shall fall to the ground without our Father. 'Fear not,' He said, 'Ye are more than many sparrows.' So, as there is nothing which is useless, and nothing which is wasted, it is very certain that love, which is the greatest of all things, cannot lose what it loves."
Angela's eyes filled with tears, she knew not why, "Love which is the greatest of all things cannot lose what it loves!"--How wonderfully tender was Manuel's voice as he spoke these words!
"You have very sweet thoughts, Manuel," she said, "You would be a great comfort to anyone in sorrow."
"That is what I have always wished to be," he answered, "But you are not in sorrow yet,--that is to come!"
She looked up quickly.
"You think I shall have some great trouble?" she asked, with a little tremour in her accents.
"Yes, most surely you will!" replied Manuel, "No one in the world ever tried to be good and great at the same time without suffering miscomprehension and bitter pain. Did not Christ say, 'In the world ye shall have tribulation'?"
"Yes,--and I have often wondered why," said Angela musingly.
"Only that you might learn to love God best," answered Manuel with a delicate inflexion of compassion in his voice, "And that you might know for certain and beyond all doubt that this life is not all. There is something better--greater--higher!--a glory that is worth winning because immortal. 'In the world ye shall have tribulation'-- yes, that is true!--but the rest of the saying is true also--'Be of good cheer,--I have overcome the world'!"
Moved by an impulse she could not understand, Angela suddenly turned and extended her hands with an instinctive grace that implied reverence as well as humility. The boy clasped them lightly then let them go,--and without more words went softly away and left her.
XIII.
The Church of Notre Dame de Lorette in Paris with its yellow stucco columns, and its hideous excess of paint and gilding, might be a ball-room designed after the newest ideas of a vulgar nouveau riche rather than a place of sanctity. The florid-minded Blondel, pupil of the equally florid-minded Regnault, hastily sketched in some of the theatrical frescoes in the "Chapel of the Eucharist," and a misguided personage named Orsel, splashed out the gaudy decorations of the "Chapel of the Virgin." The whole edifice glares at the spectator like a badly-managed limelight, and the tricky, glittering, tawdry effect blisters one's very soul. But here may be seen many little select groups out of the hell of Paris,--fresh from the burning as it were, and smelling of the brimstone,--demons who enjoy their demonism,--satyrs, concerning whom, one feels that their polished boots are cleverly designed to cover their animal hoofs, and that skilful clothiers have arranged their garments so that their tails are not perceived. But that hoofs and tails are existent would seem to be a certainty. Here sometimes will sing a celebrated tenor, bulky and brazen,--pouring out from his bull-throat such liquid devotional notes as might lift the mind of the listener to Heaven ifone were not so positive that a moral fiend sang them;-- here sometimes may be seen the stout chanteuse who is the glory of open-air cafes in the Champs Elysees, kneeling with difficulty on a velvet hassock and actually saying prayers. And one must own that it is an exhilarating and moving sight to behold such a woman pretending to confess her sins, with the full delight of them written on her face, and the avowed intention of committing them all over again manifesting itself in every turn of her head, every grin of her rouged lips, and every flash of her painted eyes! For these sections out of the French "Inferno," Notre Dame de Lorette is a good place to play penitence and feign prayer;--the Madeleine is too classic and serene and sombre in its interior to suggest anything but a museum, from which the proper custodian is absent,--Notre Dame de Paris reeks too much with the blood of slain Archbishops to be altogether comfortable,--St. Roch in its "fashionable" congregation, numbers too many little girls who innocently go to hear the music, and who have not yet begun to paint their faces, to suit those whose lives are all paint and masquerade,--and the "Lorette" is just the happy medium of a church where, Sham being written on its walls, one is scarcely surprised to see Sham in the general aspect of its worshippers. Among the ugly columns, and against the heavy ceiling divided into huge raised lumps of paint and gilding, Abbe Vergniaud's voice had often resounded,--and his sermons were looked forward to as a kind of witty entertainment. In the middle or the afterwards of a noisy Mass,--Mass which had been "performed" with perhaps the bulky tenor giving the "Agnus Dei," with as sensually dramatic an utterance as though it were a love-song in an opera, and the "basso," shouting through the "Credo," with the deep musical fury of the tenor's jealous rival,--with a violin "interlude," and a 'cello "solo,"--and a blare of trumpets at the "Elevation," as if it were a cheap spectacle at a circus fair,--after all this melodramatic and hysterical excitement it was a relief to see the Abbe mount the pulpit stairs, portly but lightfooted, his black clerical surtout buttoned closely up to his chin, his round cleanshaven face wearing a pious but suggestive smile, his eyes twinkling with latent satire, and his whole aspect expressing, "Welcome excellent humbugs! I, a humbug myself, will proceed to expound Humbug!" His sermons were generally satires on religion,-- satires delicately veiled, and full of the double-entendres so dear to the hearts of Parisians,--and their delight in him arose chiefly from never quite knowing what he meant to imply, or to enforce. Not that his hearers would have followed any counsel even if he had been so misguided as to offer it; they did not come to hear him "preach" in the full sense of the word,--they came to hear him "say things,"- -witty observations on the particular fad of the hour--sharp polemics on the political situation--or what was still more charming, neat remarks in the style of Rochefoucauld or Montaigne, which covered and found excuses for vice while seemingly condemning viciousness. There is nothing perhaps so satisfactory to persons who pride themselves on their intellectuality, as a certain kind of spurious philosophy which balances virtue and vice as it were on the point of a finger, and argues prettily on the way the two can be easily merged into each other, almost without perception. "If without perception, then without sin," says the sophist; "it is merely a question of balance." Certainly if generosity drifts into extravagance you have a virtue turned into a vice;--but there is one thing these spurious debaters cannot do, and that is to turn a vice into a virtue. That cannot be done, and has never been done. A vice is a vice, and its inherent quality is to "wax fat and gross," and to generally enlarge itself;--whereas, a virtue being a part of the Spiritual quality and acquired with difficulty, it must be continually practised, and guarded in the practice, lest it lapse into vice. We are always forgetting that we have been, and still are in a state of Evolution,--out of the Beast God has made Man,--but now He expects us, with all the wisdom, learning and experience He has given us, to evolve for ourselves from Man the Angel,--the supreme height of His divine intention. Weak as yet on our spiritual wings, we hark back to the Beast period only too willingly, and sometimes not all the persuasion in the world can lift us out of the mire wherein we elect to wallow. Nevertheless, there must be and will be a serious day of reckoning for any professing priest of the Church, or so-called "servant of the Gospel", who by the least word or covert innuendo, gives us a push back into prehistoric slime and loathliness,--and that there are numbers who do so, no one can deny. Abbe Vergniaud had flung many a pebble of sarcasm at the halfsinking faith of some of his hearers with the result that he had sunk it altogether. In his way he had done as much harm as the intolerant bigot, who when he finds persons believing devoutly in Christ, but refusing to accept Church-authority, considers such persons atheists and does not hesitate to call them so. The "Pharisees" in Christian doctrine are as haughty, hypocritical and narrow as the Pharisees whom Jesus calls "ravening wolves," and towhom He said, "Ye shut up the Kingdom of Heaven against men; for ye neither go in yourselves, NEITHER SUFFER YE THEM THAT ARE ENTERING TO GO IN," and "Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." The last words, it may be said, will apply fittingly to more than onehalf of the preachers of the Gospel at the present day!
It was a brilliant, soft autumnal Sunday morning when Cardinal Bonpre, mindful of Abbe Vergniaud's request that he should be present to hear him preach, took his slow and thoughtful way to the church of the Lorette, accompanied by his niece Angela and Manuel. The building was crammed, and had not the Abbe been previously careful to reserve seats, and to mention the Cardinal's name to the custodian, he would have scarcely obtained admission. As it was, however, he passed slowly up the centre aisle without hindrance, followed by Manuel and Angela, and watched by a good many inquisitive persons, who wondered as they looked, who the boy was that walked after His Eminence with such easy self-possession,--with such a noble and modest bearing, and with such a strangely thoughtful face. A few whispered and nudged each other as "the Sovrani" passed them, dressed in her usual quiet black, her head slightly bent and her eyes downcast. The Marquis Fontenelle, seated in an attitude which suggested a languid indifference to all persons and events, lifted his bright hazel eyes as she passed,--and a sudden wave of consciousness swept over him,--uneasy consciousness that perhaps this small slight woman despised him. This was not quite a pleasant reflection for a man and a Marquis to boot,--one who could boast of an ancient and honourable family pedigree dating back to the fighting days of Coeur-de-Lion and whose coat-of-arms was distinguished by three white lilies of France on one of its quarterings. The lilies of France!--emblems of honour, loyalty, truth, and chivalry!--what smudged and trampled blossoms they seem to day! He frowned as this fancy crossed his mind, and turned his eyes away from the following of Angela's slight form up the aisle; and his glance fell instead on a face he detested, because it was almost the counterpart of his own,--the face of the great French actor Miraudin. The same clean-shaven classic face and clustering hair,--the same glittering, amorous hazel eyes;--the same charming and kindly smile,--all these attributes were in Miraudin's face, indefinably coarsened, while in Fontenelle's they remained refined and inicative of the highest breeding. The Marquis moved uneasily in his seat,--he saw himself in the famous actor,--himself as he would be, if he continued his career of self-indulgence,--for Miraudin though gifted with a genius that could move all Paris to the wildest excesses of admiration, was in private life known as a man of detestable reputation, whose liaisons with women were endless, but who, in his extreme egotism and callousness had never been known to yield to the saving grace of a "grande passion,"--one of those faithful passions which sometimes make the greatness of both man and woman concerned, and adorn the pages of dull history with the brilliancy of deathless romance. Was he, Guy Beausire de Fontenelle no better, no nobler, no higher, in his desires and ambitions than Miraudin? What was he doing with the three lilies emblazoned on his escutcheon? He thought with a certain fretful impatience of Sylvie, of her captivating grace, her tender eyes, her sweet laughter, and sweeter smile. She had seemed to him a mere slight creation of the air and the moonbeams,--something dainty that would have melted at a touch, and dropped into his mouth, as it were, like a French bonbon. So he, man-like, had judged, and now lo!--the little ethereal creature had suddenly displayed a soul of adamant--hard and pure, and glittering as a diamond,--which no persuasion could break or bend. She had actually kept her word!--she had most certainly left Paris. The Marquis knew that, by the lamentable story of her dismissed maid who had come to him with hysterical tears, declaring that "Madame" had suddenly developed a "humeur incroyable"--and had gone away alone,--alone, save for a little dusky-skinned Arab boy whom she had once brought away from Biskra and had trained as an attendant,--her "gouvernante" and companion, Madame Bozier, and her old butler who had known her from childhood. Fontenelle felt that the dismissal of the maid who had been such a convenient spy for him, was due to Angela Sovrani's interference, and though angry, he was conscious of feeling at the same time mean in himself, and miserable. To employ a servant to play the spy on her mistress, and report to him her actions and movements, might be worthy of a Miraudin, but was it quite the thing for a Marquis Fontenelle? Thinking over these things his handsome face grew flushed and anon pale again, as from time to time he stole a vexed side glance at the easy Miraudin,--so like him in features and--unfortunately so equally like him in morals! Meanwhile, the music of the Mass surged round him, in thunders of the organ, wailings of violins, groaning of 'cellos, and flutings of boys' and men's voices,--and as the cloudy incense rose upon the air he began to weave strange fancies in his mind, and to see in the beams of sunlight falling through the stained glass windows a vision of the bright face of Sylvie looking down upon him with a half-tender, half-reproving smile,--a smile that seemed to say, "If thou lovest me, set the grace of honour on thy love!" These were strange thoughts for him to entertain, and he was almost ashamed of them,--but as long as the melodies of the Mass kept rolling on and reverberating around him he could not help thinking of them; so that he was relieved when a pause came,--the interval for the sermon,--and Abbe Vergniaud, leisurely mounting the steps of the pulpit, stood surveying the congregation with the composed yet quizzical air for which he was celebrated, and waiting till the rustling, fidgeting, coughing, snuffing, toe-scraping noises of the congregation had settled down into comparative silence. His attitude during this interval was suggestive. It implied contempt, wearied patience, resignation, and a curious touch of defiance. Holding himself very erect he rested his left hand on the elaborate sculptured edge of the pulpit,--it was the hand on which he usually wore his ring, a diamond of purest lustre,--but on this occasion the jewel had been removed and the white, firm fingers, outlined against the pulpit edge, looked as though they had just relaxed their grasp of something that had been more or less of a trouble to retain. Nothing perhaps is so expressive as a hand,-- the face can disguise itself,--even the eyes can lie,--but the hand never. Its shape, its movements, its attitude in repose, give a more certain clue to character and disposition than almost any other human feature. Thus, with the Abbe, while his left hand suggested a "letting go," his right hand, which held a small black-bound Testament implied defiance, grip, resolve and courage. And when the people seated immediately around the pulpit lifted their eyes expectantly to the popular preacher's face, several of the more observant noticed something in his look and manner which was unfamiliar and curiously disconcerting. If it be true, as there is every reason to believe it is, that each human being unconsciously gives out an "aura" of his interior personality which is made more or less powerful to attract or repel by the nature of his intentions, and which affects the "aura" of those with whom he is brought in contact, then Abbe Vergniaud was this morning creating all unawares to himself a very singular impression of uneasiness. Some of the persons thus uncomfortably influenced coughed violently in an instinctive attempt to divert or frustrate the preacher's mood, but even the most persistent cougher must cease coughing at some time or another--and the Abbe was evidently determined to wait for an absolute silence before he spoke. At last silence came, and he opened the Testament. Holding it up to the view of the congregation, he began with all that easy eloquence which the French tongue gives to a cultured speaker,--his voice full and sonorous, reaching distinctly to every part of the crowded church.
"This," he said, "is a small book which you all pretend to know. It is so small a book that it can easily be read through in an hour. It is the Testament;--or the Last Will and Command to the world of one Jesus Christ, who was crucified on account of His Divinity more than eighteen hundred years ago. I mention the fact, in case any of you have forgotten it! It is generally understood that this book is the message of God and the key of Faith;--upon it our churches and religious systems are founded;--by its teaching we are supposed to order our conduct of life--and yet,--though as I have said, it is a very small book, and would not take you an hour to read it--none of you know any thing about it! That is a strange thing, is it not?"
Here he leaned over the pulpit edge, and his bright eyes, coldly satiric, flashed a comprehensive glance over the whole congregation.
"Yes, it is a strange thing, but I affirm it true,--that none of you know anything whatever about the contents of this small volume which is the foundation of the Christian Faith! You never read it yourselves,--and if we priests read it to you, you never remember it! It is a locked Mystery,--perhaps, for all we know, the greatest mystery in the world,--and the one most worth probing! For the days seem to be coming, if they have not already come, which were prophesied by St. John the Divine, whom certain 'clever' men of the time have set down as mad;--days which were described as 'shaking the powers of heaven and creating confusion on the earth.' St. John said some strange things; one thing in particular, concerning this very book, which reads thus;--'I saw in the right hand of Him that sat upon the throne a book sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice; Who is worthy to open and to loose the seals thereof? And no man in heaven or in earth was able to open the book neither to look thereon. And I wept much because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.' But St. John the Divine was mad, we are told,--madness and inspiration being judged as one and the same thing. Well, if in these statements he is supposed to prove his madness, I consider a doubt must be set upon everyone's sanity. For his words are an exact description of the present period of the world's existence and its attitude towards the Gospel of Christ,-- 'NO MAN IS FOUND WORTHY TO LOOSE THE SEALS OF THE BOOK OR TO LOOK THEREON.' But I am not going to talk to you about the seven seals. They adequately represent our favourite 'seven deadly sins,' which have kept the book closed since the days of the early martyrs;--and are likely to keep it closed still. Nor shall I speak of our unworthiness to read what we have never taken the trouble to rightly understand,--for all this would be waste of time. It is part of our social sham to pretend we know the Gospel,--and it is a still greater sham to assume that we have ever tried in the smallest degree to follow its teaching. What we know of these teachings has influenced us unconsciously, but the sayings in the Gospel of Christ are in very truth as enveloped in mystery to each separate individual reader as the oracles of the ancient Egyptians were to the outside multitude. And why? Merely because, to comprehend the teaching of Jesus we should have to think,--and we all hate thinking. It is too much exertion,--and exertion itself is unpleasant. A quarter of an hour's hard thinking will convince each one of us that he or she is a very worthless and ridiculous person, and we strongly object to any process which will, in itself, bring us to that conclusion. I say 'we' object,--that is, I and you; particularly I. I admit at once that to appear worthless and ridiculous to the world has always seemed to me a distressing position, and one to be avoided. Worthless and ridiculous in my own eyes I have always been,--but that is not your affair. It is strictly mine! And though I feel I am not worthy 'to loose the seals of the book or look thereon,' there is one passage in it which strikes me as particularly applicable to the present day, and from it I will endeavour to draw a lesson for your instruction, though perhaps not for your entertainment."
Here he paused and glanced at his hearers with an indefinable expression of mingled scorn and humour.
"What an absurdity it is to talk of giving a 'lesson' to you!--you who will barely listen to a friend's advice,--you who will never take a hint for your mental education or improvement, you who are apt to fly into a passion, or take to the sulks when you are ever so slightly contradicted. Tiens, tiens! c'est drole! Now the words I am about to preach from, are supposed to have been uttered by Divine lips; and if you thoroughly believed this, you would of your own accord kneel down and pray that you might receive them with full comprehension and ready obedience. But you do not believe;--so I will not ask you to kneel down in mockery, or feign to pray when you are ignorant of the very spirit of prayer! So take the words,-- without preparation, without thought, without gratitude, as you take everything God gives you, and see what you can make of them. 'The light of the body is the eye,--if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!'"
Here he closed the Testament, and rested it edgewise on the pulpit cushion, keeping one hand firmly clasped upon it as he turned himself about and surveyed the whole congregation.
"What is the exact meaning of the words, 'IF THINE EYE BE SINGLE'? It is an expressive term; and in its curt simplicity covers a profound truth. 'If thine eye,' namely,--the ability to see,--'be single,' that is straight and clear, without dimness or obliquity,-- 'thy whole body shall be full of light.' Christ evidently did not apply this expression to the merely physical capability of sight,-- but to the moral and mental, or psychic vision. It matters nothing really to the infinite forces around us, whether physically speaking, we are able to see, or whether we are born blind; but spiritually, it is the chief necessity of our lives that we should be able to see straight morally. Yet that is what we can seldom or never do. Modern education, particularly education in France, provides us at once with a double psychic lens, and a side-squint into the bargain! Seeing straight would be too primitive and simple for us. But Christ says, 'If thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.' Now this word 'evil,' as set in juxtaposition to the former term 'single,' evidently implies a double sight or perverted vision. With this 'evil,' or double sight, our whole body 'shall be full of darkness.' Very well, my friends, if this be true,--(and you surely must believe it true, otherwise you would not support churches for the exposition of the truth as spoken by the Founder of our Faith;--) then we are children of the dark indeed! I doubt if one amongst us,--for I include myself with you,--can be said to see clearly with a straight psychic vision. The straight psychic vision teaches us that God is the Creator of all things,-- God is Light and Love,--God desires good from us, and from every particle of his creation;--but the double or perverted line of sight offers a different view and declares, 'This life is short and offers many pleasures. I cannot be sure of God because I have never seen Him;--the Universe is certainly very majestic, and somewhat startling to me in its exact mathematical proportions; but I have no more to do with it than has a grain of sand;--my lot is no more important than that of the midge in the sunbeam;--I live,--I breed-- I die;--and it matters to no one but myself how I do these three things, provided I satisfy my nature.' This is the Philosophy of the Beast, and it is just now very fashionable. It is 'la haute mode' both in France, and England, Italy, and Spain. Only young America seem to be struggling for a Faith,--a Christian Faith;--it has almost, albeit faintly and with a touching indecision, asked for such a Faith from the Pope,--who has however declared it to be impossible in these words addressed to Cardinal Gibbons, 'Discussion of the principles of the Church cannot be tolerated even in the United States. There can only be one interpreter, the Pope. In the matter of discipline, concessions may be allowed, but in doctrine none.' Mark the words, 'cannot be tolerated'! Consider what stability a Faith can have whose principles may not be discussed! Yet the authority of the Church is, we are told the authority of God Himself. How is this? We can discuss God and His principles. He 'tolerates' us while we search for His laws, and stand amazed and confounded before His marvellous creation. The more we look for Him the more He gives Himself gloriously to us; and Christ declares 'Seek and ye shall find,'--the Church says 'Seek and ye shall not be tolerated'! How are we to reconcile these two assertions? We do not reconcile them; we cannot; it is a case of double sight,--oblique and perverted psychic vision. Christ spoke plainly;--the Church speaks obscurely. Christ gave straight commands,--we fly in the face of them and openly disobey them. Truth can always be 'discussed,' and Truth MUST be 'tolerated' were a thousand Holy Fathers to say it nay! But note again the further words to America, 'There can only be one interpreter,--the Pope. In the matter of discipline, concessions may be allowed, but in doctrine none.' Let us examine into this doctrine. It is the doctrine of Christ, plain and straightforward; enunciated in such simple words that even a child can understand them. But the Church announces with a strident voice that there can only be one interpreter,--the Pope. Nevertheless Truth has a more resonant voice than even that of the Church. Truth cries out at this present day, 'Unless you will listen to Me who am the absolute utterance of God, who spake by the prophets, who spake through Christ,--who speaks through Christ and all things still,--your little systems, your uncertain churches, your inefficient creeds, your quarrelsome sects, shall crumble away into dust and ruins! For humanity is waiting for the true Church of Christ; the one pure House of Praise from which all sophistry, all superstition and vanity shall have fled, and only God in the Christ-Miracle and the perfection of His Creation shall remain!' And there is no more sure foundation for this much-needed House of Praise than the Catholic Church,--the word 'catholic' being applied in its widest sense, meaning a 'Universal' answering to the needs of all;--and I am willing to maintain that the ROMAN Catholic Church has within it the vital germ of a sprouting perfection. If it would utterly discard pomp and riches, if it would set its dignity at too high an estimate for any wish to meddle in temporal or political affairs, if it would firmly trample down all superstition, idolatry and bigotry, and 'use no vain repetition as the heathen do'--to quote Christ's own words,- -if in place of ancient dogma and incredible legendary lore, it would open its doors to the marvels of science, the miracles and magnificence daily displayed to us in the wonderful work of God's Universe, then indeed it might obtain a lasting hold on mankind. It might conquer Buddhism, and Christianize the whole earth. But--'If thine eye be evil thy whole body shall be full of darkness,'--and while the Church remains double-sighted we are bound also to see double. And so we listen with a complete and cynical atheism to the conventional statement that 'one man alone' shall interpret Christ's teaching to us of the Roman following,--and this man an old frail teacher, whose bodily and intellectual powers are, in the course of nature, steadily on the decline. Why we ask, must an aged man be always elected to decide on the teaching of the ever-young and deathless Christ?--to whom the burden of years was unknown, and whose immortal spirit, cased for a while in clay, saw ever the rapt vision of 'old things being made new'? In all other work but this of religious faith, men in the prime of life are selected to lead,--men of energy, thought, action, and endeavour,--but for the sublime and difficult task of lifting the struggling human soul out of low things to lofty, an old man, weak, and tottering on the verge of the grave, is set before us as our 'infallible' teacher! There is something appalling in the fact, that look where we may, no profession holds out much chance of power or authority to any man past sixty, but the Head of the Church may be so old that he can hardly move one foot before the other, yet he is permitted to be declared the representative of the ever-working, ever-helping, evercomforting Christ, who never knew what it was to be old! Enough, however of this strange superstition which is only one of many in the Church, and which are all the result of double or perverted sight,--I come to the last part of the text which runs, 'If therefore the light in thee be darkness how great is that darkness.' IF THEREFORE THE LIGHT IN THEE BE DARKNESS! My friends, that is exactly my condition, and has been my condition ever since I was twenty. The light in me has been darkness. The intellectual quality of my brain which has helped me to attain my present false position among you . . ."
Here he paused, for there was a distinct movement of surprise among his audience, which till now, had remained to a man so still that the buzz of a fly on the window-pane sounded almost as loud as the drone of a bag-pipe,--then with a faint smile on his lips he resumed,--
"I hope you all heard my words distinctly! I said, the false position I have attained among you. I repeat it lest there should be any mistake. It IS a false position and always has been. I have never for an instant believed half what I have asked you to believe! And I have preached to you what I have never dreamed of practising! Yet I venture to say that I am not worse than most of my brethren. The intellectual men of France, whether clergy or laity, are in a difficult situation. Their brains are keen and clear; and, intellectually speaking, they are totally unable to accept the Church superstitions of the tenth and twelfth centuries. But in rejecting superstition it would have been quite possible to have held them fast to a sublime faith in God and an Immortal Future, had the Church caught them when slipping, and risen to the mental demand made upon her resources. But the old worn-out thunder of the Vatican, which lately made a feeble noise in America, has rolled through France with the same assertion, 'Discussion cannot be tolerated'; and what has been the result? Simply this,--that all the intellectual force of the country is arrayed against priestcraft;-- and the spirit of an insolent, witty, domineering atheism and materialism rules us all. Even young children can be found by the score who laugh at the very idea of a God, and who fling a jeer at the story of the Crucifixion of Christ,--while vice and crime are tolerated and often excused. Moral restraint is being less and less enforced, and the clamouring for sensual indulgence has become so incessant that the desire of the whole country, if put into one line, might be summed up in the impotent cry of the Persian voluptuary Omar Khayyam to his god, 'Reconcile the law to my desires'. This is as though a gnat should seek to build a cathedral, and ask for the laws of architecture to be altered in order to suit his gnat-like capacity. The Law is the Law; and if broken, brings punishment. The Law makes for good,--and if we pull back for evil, destroys us in its outward course. Vice breeds corruption in body and in soul; and history furnishes us with more than sufficient examples of that festering disease. It is plainly demanded of us that we should assist God's universe in its way towards perfection; if we refuse, and set a drag on the majestic Wheel, we are ourselves crushed in its progress. Here is where our Church errs in the present generation. It is setting itself as a drag on the Wheel. Meanwhile, Truth advances every day, and with no uncertain voice proclaims the majesty of God. Heaven's gates are thrown open;--the secrets of the stars are declared,--the mysteries of light and sound are discovered; and we are approaching possibly to the time when the very graves shall give up their dead, and the secrets of all men's hearts shall be made manifest. Yet we go on lying, deceiving, cajoling, humbugging each other and ourselves;--living a daily life of fraud and hypocrisy, with a sort of smug conviction in our souls that we shall never be found out. We make a virtue of animalism, and declare the Beast-Philosophy to be in strict keeping with the order of nature. We gloat over our secret sins, and face the world with a brazen front of assumed honour. Oh, we are excellent liars all! But somehow we never seem to think we are fools as well! We never remember that all we do and all we say, is merely the adding of figures to a sum which in the end must be made up to the grand total, and paid! Every figure tells;--the figure 'nought' especially, puts an extra thousand on the whole quantity! But the light in us being darkness, how great is that darkness! So great that we refuse to look an inch before us! We will not see, we will not understand,--we utterly decline to accept any teaching or advice which might inflict some slight inconvenience on our own Ego. And so we go on day after day, till all at once a reckoning is called and death stares us in the face. What! So soon finished? All over? Must we go at once, and no delay? Must we really and truly drop all our ridiculous lies and conventions and be sent away naked-souled into the Living Unknown? Not the Dead Unknown remember!--for nothing is actually dead! The whole universe palpitates and burns with ever recreated life. What have we done with the past life?--and what shall we do with this other life? Oh, but there is no time to ask questions now,--we should have asked them before; the hour of departure is come, and there is not a moment's breathing time! Our dear friends (if we have any), and our paid doctors and servants stand around us awe-struck,--they watch out last convulsive shudder- -and weep--not so much for sorrow sometimes as terror,--and then when all is over, they say we are 'gone'. Yes,--we are gone--but where? Well, we shall each of us find that out, my friends, when we pass away from Popes, Churches, Creeds, and Conventions to the majesty of the actual Glory! Shall we pray then? Shall we weep? Shall we talk of rituals? Shall we say this or that form of prayer was the true one?--this or that creed was the 'only' one? Shall we complain of our neighbours?--or shall we not suddenly realise that there never was but one way of life and progress through creation,-- the good and pure, the truthful and courageous, as taught with infinite patience by the God-Man, and that wheresoever we have followed our own inclinations rather than His counsel, then our OWN action, not God's punishment, condemns us,--our OWN words, not God's, re-echo back our sins upon ourselves!"
He paused, looking everywhere around him,--all his hearers were listening with an almost breathless attention.
"Oh, yes! I know the charm of sin!" he continued with mingled mockery and passion vibrating in his voice;--"The singular fascination of pure devilry! All of you know it too,--those of you who court the world's applause on the stage, or in the salons of art and literature, and who pretend that by your work you are elevating and assisting humanity, while in your own private lives you revel in such vice as the very dogs you keep might be ashamed of! There is no beast so bestial as man at his worst! And some of you whom I know, glory in being seen at your worst always. There are many among you here to-day whose sole excuse for a life of animalism is, that it is your nature, 'I live according to my temperament,--my disposition,-- I do not wish to change myself--you cannot change me; I am as I am made'! So might the thief argue as he steals his neighbour's money,- -so may the murderer console himself as he stabs his victim! 'It is my nature to stab and to steal--it is my nature to live as a beast-- I do not wish to change; you cannot change me'. Now if these arguments were true, and hold good, man would be still where he begun,--in the woods and caves,--an uncouth savage with nothing save an animal instinct to lead him where he could find food. But even this earliest instinct, savage though it was, taught him that something higher than himself had made him, and so he began to creep on by slow degrees towards that higher at once; hence instinct led to reason, and reason to culture and civilization. And now having touched as high a point of experience and knowledge as the ancient Assyrians and Egyptians attained before their decline, he is beginning even as they did, to be weary and somewhat afraid of what lies beyond in the as yet unfathomed realms of knowledge; and he half wishes to creep back again on all-fours to the days when he was beast merely. The close contemplation of the Angel terrifies him,-- he dare not grow his wings! Further than life, as life appears to him on its material side, he is afraid to soar,--what lies in the far distance he dare not consider! This is where the Pause comes in all progress,--the hesitation, the doubt, the fear;--the moment when the Creature draws so near to his Creator that he is dazzled and confounded. And it is a strange fact that he is always left alone,-- alone with his own Will, in every such grand crisis. He has been helped so much by divine influences, that he is evidently considered strong enough to decide his own fate. He is strong enough,--he has sufficient reason and knowledge to decide it for the Highest, if he would. But, with national culture goes national luxury,--the more civilised a community, the greater its bodily ease,--the more numerous the temptations against which we are told we must fight. Spirit flies forward--Body pulls back. But Spirit is one day bound to win! We have attained in this generation a certain knowledge of Soul-forces--and we are on a verge, where, if we hesitate, we are lost, and must recoil upon our own Ego as the centre of all desire. But if we go on boldly and leave our own Ego behind, we shall see the gates of Heaven opening indeed, and all the Mysteries unveiled! How often we pause on the verge of better things, doubting whether to rise or grovel! The light in us is darkness, and how great is that darkness! Such is the state of mind in which I, your preacher, have found myself for many years! I do not know whether to rise or grovel,--to sink or soar! To be absolutely candid with you, I am quite sure that I should not sink in your opinion for confessing myself to be as outrageous in my conceptions of mortality as many of you are. You would possibly pretend to be ashamed of me, but in your hearts you would like me all the better. The sinking or the soaring of my nature has therefore nothing whatever to do with you. It is a strictly personal question. But what I specially wish to advise you of this morning,--taking myself as an example,--is that none of you, whether inclined to virtue or to vice, should remain such arrant fools as to imagine that your sins will not find you out. They will,--the instant they are committed, their sole mission is to start on your track, and hunt you down! I cannot absolutely vouch to you that there is a God,--but I am positive there is a hidden process of mathematics going on in the universe which sums up our slightest human affairs with an exactitude which at the least is amazing. Twenty-five years ago I did a great wrong to a human creature who was innocent, and who absolutely trusted me. There is no crime worse than this, yet it seemed to me quite a trifling affair,--an amusement--a nothing! I was perfectly aware that by some excessively straightlaced people it might be termed a sin; but my ideas of sin were as easy and condoning as yours are. I never repented it,--I can hardly say I ever thought of it,--if I did I excused myself quickly, and assured my own conscience in the usual way, that the fault was merely the result of circumstances over which I had no control. Oh, those uncontrollable circumstances! How convenient they are! And what a weak creature they make of man, who at other times than those of temptation, is wont to assert himself master of this planet! Master of a planet and cannot control a vice! Excellent! Well,--I never, as I say, thought of the wrong I had done,--but if _I_ forgot it, some One or some Thing remembered it! Yes--remembered it!--put it down--chronicled it with precision as to time and place,--and set it, a breathing fact, before me in my old age,--a living witness of my own treachery."
He paused, the congregation stirred,--the actor Miraudin looked up at him with a surprised half-smile. Angela Sovrani lifted her beautiful violet eyes towards him in amazed compassion,--Cardinal Bonpre, recalling the Abbe previous confession to him, bent his head, deeply moved.
"Treachery," resumed Vergniaud determinedly, "Is always a covert thing. We betray each other in the dark, with silent foot-steps and sibilant voices. We whisper our lies. We concoct our intrigues with carefully closed doors. I did so. I was a priest of the Roman Church as I am now; it would never have done for a priest to be a social sinner! I therefore took every precaution to hide my fault;--but out of my lie springs a living condemnation; from my carefully concealed hypocrisy comes a blazonry of truth, and from my secret sin comes an open vengeance . . ."
At the last words the loud report of a pistol sounded through the building . . . there was a puff of smoke, a gleam of flame, and a bullet whizzed straight at the head of the preacher! The congregation rose, en masse, uttering exclamations of terror,--but before anyone could know exactly what had happened the smoke cleared, and the Abbe Vergniaud was seen leaning against the steps of the pulpit, pale but uninjured, and in front of him stood the boy Manuel with arms outstretched, and a smile on his face. The bullet had split the pulpit immediately above him. An excited group assembled round them immediately, and the Abbe was the first to speak.
"I am not hurt!--" he said quickly--"See to the boy! He sprang in front of me and saved my life."
But Manuel was equally unhurt, and waived aside all enquiries and compliments. And while eager questions were poured out and answered, a couple of gendarmes were seen struggling in the centre of the church with a man who seemed to have the power of a demon, so fierce and frantic were his efforts to escape.
"Ah, voila! The assassin!" cried Miraudin, hastening to give assistance.
"The assassin!" echoed a dozen other persons pressing in the same direction.
Vergniaud heard, and gave one swift glance at Cardinal Bonpre who, though startled by the rapidity and excitement of the scene that had occurred, was equal to the occasion, and understood his friend's appeal at once, even before he said hurriedly,
"Monseigneur! Tell them to let him go!--or--bring him face to face with me!"
The Cardinal endeavoured to pass through the crowd, but though some made way for him on account of his ecclesiastical dignity, others closed in, and he found it impossible to move more than a few steps. Then Vergniaud, moved by a sudden resolve, raised himself a little, and resting one hand on the shoulder of Manuel, who still remained on the steps of the pulpit in front of him, he called,
"Let Monsieur the assassin come here to me! I have a word to say to him!"
Through the swaying, tumultuous, murmuring throng came a sudden stillness, and everyone drew back as the gendarmes responding to Abbe Vergniaud's command, pushed their way along, dragging and hustling their prisoner between them,--a young black-browed, blackeyed peasant with a handsome face and proud bearing, whose defiant manner implied that having made one fierce struggle for liberty and finding it in vain, he was now disdainfully resigned to the inevitable. When brought face to face with the Abbe he lifted his head, and flashed his dark eyes upon him with a look of withering contempt. His lips parted,--he seemed about to speak when his glance accidentally fell upon Manuel,--then something caused him to hesitate,--he checked himself on the very verge of speech and remained silent. The Abbe surveyed him with something of a quizzical half-admiring smile, then addressing the gendarmes he said,
"Let him go!"
The men looked up astonished, doubting whether they had heard aright.
"Let him go!" repeated the Abbe firmly, "I have no accusation to make against him. Had he killed me he would have been perfectly justified! Let him go!"
"Cher Abbe!" remonstrated the Marquis Fontenelle, who had made himself one of the group immediately around the pulpit, "Is not this a mistake on your part? Let me advise you not to be so merciful . . ."
"'Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy'"! quoted the Abbe with a strange smile, while his breath came and went quickly, and his face grew paler as he spoke. "Set him free, messieurs, if you please! I decline to prosecute my own flesh and blood! I will be answerable for his future conduct,--I am entirely answerable for his past! He is my son!"
XIV.
No one ever afterwards quite knew how the crowd in the church broke up and dispersed itself after this denouement. For a few minutes the crush of people round the pulpit was terrific; all eyes were fixed on the young black-browed peasant who had so nearly been a parricide,--and on the father who publicly exonerated him,--and then there came a pressing towards the doors which was excessively dangerous to life and limb. Cardinal Bonpre, greatly moved by the whole unprecedented scene, placed himself in front of Angela as a shield and defence from the crowd; but before he had time to consider how he should best pilot her through the pushing and scrambling throng, a way was made for him by Manuel, who,--with a quiet step and unruffled bearing,--walked through the thickest centre of the crowd, which parted easily on either side of him, as though commanded to do so by some unheard but absolute authority. Admiring and wondering glances were turned upon the boy, whose face shone with such a grave peace and sweetness;--he had saved the Abbe's life, the people whispered, by springing up the steps of the pulpit, and throwing himself between the intended victim and the bullet of his assailant. Who was he? Where did he come from? No one knew;--he was merely the attendant of that tall ascetic-looking Cardinal, the uncle of the famous Sovrani. So the words ran from mouth to mouth, as Felix Bonpre and his niece moved slowly through the throng, following Manuel;--then, when they had passed, there came a general hubbub and confusion once more, and the people hustled and elbowed each other through the church regardless of consequences, eager to escape and discuss among themselves the sensation of the morning.
"C'est un drame! Un veritable drame!" said Miraudin, pausing, as he found himself face to face with the Marquis Fontenelle.
Fontenelle stared haughtily.
"Did you speak to me, Monsieur?" he enquired, glancing the actor up and down with an air of supreme disdain.
Miraudin laughed carelessly.
"Yes, I spoke to you, Marquis!" he replied, "I said that the public confession of our dear priest Vergniaud was a veritable drame!"
"An unfortunate scandal in the Church!" said Fontenelle curtly.
"Yes!" went on the unabashed Miraudin, "If it were on the stage it would be taken as a matter of course. An actor's follies help to populate the world. But a priest's petite faute would seem to suggest the crushing down of a universe!"
"Custom and usage make the rule in these things," said Fontenelle turning away, "I have the honour to wish you good-day, Monsieur!"
"One moment!" said the actor smiling, "There is a curious personal resemblance between you and me, Monsieur le Marquis! Have you ever noticed it? We might almost be brothers by our looks--and also I believe by our temperaments!"
Fontenelle's hazel eyes flashed angrily.
"I think not!" he said coldly, "A certain resemblance between totally unrelated persons is quite common. For the rest, we are absolutely different--absolutely!"
Again Miraudin laughed.
"As you will, Marquis!" and he raised his hat with a light, halfmocking air, "Au revoir!"
Fontenelle scarcely acknowledged the salutation,--he was too much annoyed. He considered it a piece of insolence on Miraudin's part to have addressed him at all without previous introduction. It was true that the famous actor was permitted a license not granted to the ordinary individual,--as indeed most actors are. Even princes, who hedge themselves round with impassable barriers to certain of their subjects who are in all ways great and worthy of notice, unbend to the Mime who today takes the place of the Court-jester, and allow him to enter the royal presence, often bringing his newest wanton with him. And there was not the slightest reason for the Marquis Fontenelle to be at all particular in his choice of acquaintances. Yet somehow or other, he was. The fine and sensitive instincts of a gentleman were in him, and though in the very depths of his own conscience he knew himself to be as much of a social actor as Miraudin was a professional one,--though he was aware that his passions were as sensual, and therefore as vulgar, (for sensuality is vulgarity), there was a latent pride in him which forbade him to set himself altogether on the same level. And now as he walked away haughtily, his fine aristocratic head lifted a little higher in air than usual, he was excessively irritated--with everything and everybody, but with himself in particular. Abbe Vergniaud's sermon had stung him in several ways, and the startling FINALE had vexed him still more.
"What folly!" he thought, as he entered his luxuriously appointed flat, and threw himself into a chair with a kind of angry weariness, "How utterly stupid of Vergniaud to blazon the fact that he is no better than other men, in the full face of his congregation! He must be mad! A priest of the Roman Church publicly acknowledging a natural son! [Footnote: ROME, August 19, 1899--A grave scandal has just burst upon the world here. The Gazetta di Venezia having attacked the bishops attending the recent conclave of "Latin America," that is, Spanish-speaking America, as men of loose morality, the Osservatore Cattolico, the Vatican organ, replied declaring that the life of the bishops present at the conclave was above suspicion. The Gazetta di Venezia responds, affirming that the majority of the bishops brought with them to Rome their mistresses, and in some instances their children. The Gazetta offers to disclose the names of these bishops, and demands that the Pope shall satisfy the Catholic world by taking measures against them.--Central News.] Has ever such a thing been heard of! And the result is merely to create scandal and invite his own disgrace! A quoi bon!"
He lit a cigarette and puffed at it impatiently. His particular "code" of morality had been completely upset;--things seemed to have taken a turn for general offence, and the simplest thoughts became like bristles in his brain, pricking him uncomfortably in various sore and sensitive places. Then, added to his general sense of spleen was the unpleasant idea that he was really in love, where he had never meant to be in love. "In love", is a wide term nowadays, and covers a multitude of poor and petty passing emotions,--and it is often necessary to add the word "really" to it, in order to emphasise the fact that the passion has perhaps,--and even then it is only a perhaps,--taken a somewhat lasting form. Why could not Sylvie Hermenstein have allowed things to run their natural course?- -this natural course being according to Fontenelle, to drop into his arms when asked, and leave those arms again with equal alacrity also when asked! It would have been quite pleasant and satisfactory to him, the Marquis;--and for Sylvie--well!--for Sylvie, she would soon have got over it! Now there was all this fuss and pother about virtue! Virtue, quotha! In a woman, and in Paris! At this time of day! Could anything be more preposterous and ridiculous!
"One would imagine I had stumbled into a convent for young ladies," he grumbled to himself, "What with Sylvie actually gone, and that pretty pattern of chastity, Angela Sovrani, preaching at me with her big violet eyes,--and now Vergniaud who used to be 'bon camarade et bon vivant', branding himself a social sinner--really one would imagine that some invisible Schoolmaster was trying to whip me into order . . ."
"Peut-on entrer?" called a clear voice outside at this juncture, and without waiting for permission the speaker entered, a very pretty woman in an admirably fitting riding habit, which she held daintily up with one gloved hand, extending the other as she came to the Marquis who gracefully bent over it and kissed it.
"Charme de vous voir Princesse!" he murmured.
"Not at all! Spare me your falsehoods!" was the gay reply, accompanied by a dazzling smile, "You are not in the least charmed, nothing,--nobody charms you,--I least of all! Did you not see me in church? No! Where were your eyes? On the courageous Vergniaud, who so nearly gave us the melancholy task of arranging a 'Chapelle ardente' for him this afternoon?" She laughed, and her eyes twinkled maliciously,--then she went on, "Do you know he is quite a delightful boy,--the peasant son and assassin? I think of taking him to my Chateau and making something of him. I waited to see the whole play out, and bring you the news. Papa Vergniaud has gone home with his good-looking offspring--then Cardinal Bonpre--do you know the Cardinal Bonpre?"
"By reputation merely," replied the Marquis, setting a chair for his fair visitor, "And as the uncle of Donna Sovrani."
"Oh, reputation is nothing," laughed the lady, known as the Princesse D'Agramont, an independent beauty of great wealth and brilliant attainments, "Your butler can give you a reputation, or take it away from you! But the Cardinal's reputation is truly singular. It is goodness, merely! He is so good that he has become actually famous for it! Now I once thought that to become famous for goodness must surely imply that the person so celebrated had a very hypocritical nature,--the worst of natures indeed;--that of pretending to be what he was not,--but I was mistaken. Cardinal Bonpre IS good. Absolutely sincere and noble--therefore a living marvel in this age!"
"You are pleased to be severe, Princesse," said the Marquis, "Is sincerity so difficult to find?"
"The most difficult of virtues!" answered the Princesse, lightly tapping out a little tune with the jewelled handle of her riding whip on the arm of her chair, "That is why I like horses and dogs so much--they are always honest. And for that reason I am now inclined to like Abbe Vergniaud whom I never liked before. He has turned honest! To-day indeed he has been as straightforward as if he were not a man at all!--and I admire him for it. He and his son will be my guests at the Chateau D'Agramont."
"What a very strange woman you are!" said Fontenelle, with a certain languid admiration beginning to glimmer in his eyes, "You always do things that nobody else would dare do--and yet . . . no lovers!"
She turned herself swiftly round and surveyed him with a bright scorn that swept him as with a lightning flash from head to heel.
"Lovers! Who would be bored by them! Such delightful company! So unselfish in their demands--so tender and careful of a woman's feelings! Pouf! Cher ami!--you forget! I was the wife of the late Prince D'Agramont!"
"That explains a great many of your moods certainly," said the Marquis smiling.
"Does it not? Le beau Louis!--romantic Louis!--poet Louis!--musician Louis!--Louis, who talked pretty philosophies by the hour,--Louis who looked so beautiful by moonlight,--who seemed fastidious and refined to a degree that was almost ethereal!--Louis who swore, with passion flashing in his eyes, that I was the centre of the universe to him, and that no other woman had ever occupied, would ever occupy, or SHOULD ever occupy his thoughts!--yes, he was an ideal lover and husband indeed!" said the Princesse smiling coldly, "I gave him all my life and love, till one day, when I found I was sharing his caresses with my plumpest dairymaid, who called him "HER Louis"! Then I thought it was time to put an end to romance. TIENS!" and she gave a little shrug and sigh, "It is sad to think he died of over-eating."
The Marquis laughed.
"You are incorrigible, belle Loyse!" he said, "You should write these things, not speak them."
"Really! And do I not write them? Yes, you know I do, and that you envy me my skill. The Figaro is indebted to me for many admirable essays. At the same time I do not give you permission to call me Loyse."
"Forgive me!" and the Marquis folded his hands with an air of mock penitence.
"Perhaps I will, presently," and she laughed, "But meanwhile I want you to do something for me."
"Toujours a votre service, madame!" and Fontenelle bowed profoundly.
"How theatrical you look! You are alarmingly like Miraudin;--and one MUST draw the line at Miraudin! This is a day of truth according to the Abbe Vergniaud; how dare you say you are at my service when you do not mean it?"
"Princesse, I protest . . ."
"Oh, protest as much as you like,--on the way to Rome!"
The Marquis started.
"To Rome?"
"Yes, to Rome. I am going, and I want someone to look after me. Will you come? All Paris will say we have eloped together." She laughed merrily.
The Marquis stood perplexed and silent.
"Well, what is it?" went on the Princesse gaily, "Is there some faint sense of impropriety stealing over you? Not possible! Dear me, your very muscles are growing rigid! You will not go?"
"Madame, if you will permit me to be frank with you,--I would rather not!"
"A la bonheur!--then I have you!" And the Princesse rose, a dazzling smile irradiating her features, "You have thrown open your heart! You have begun to reform! You love Sylvie Hermenstein--yes!--you positively LOVE her!"
"Princesse--" began the Marquis, "I assure you--"
"Assure me nothing!" and she looked him straight in the eyes, "I know all about it! You will not journey with me because you think the Comtesse Sylvie will hear of it, and put a wrong construction on your courtesy. You wish to try for once, to give her no cause for doubting you to be sans peur et sans reproche. You wish to make her think you something better than a sort of Miraudin whose amorous inclinations are not awakened by one woman, but by women! And so you will not do anything which, though harmless in itself, may seem equivocal. For this you refuse the friendly invitation of one of the best known 'society leaders' in Europe! CHER Marquis!--it is a step in the right direction! Adieu!"
"You are not going so soon," he said hurriedly, "Wait till I explain . . ."
"There is nothing to explain!" and the pretty Princesse gave him her hand with a beneficent air, "I am very pleased with you. You are what the English call 'good boy'! Now I am going to see the Abbe and place the Chateau D'Agramont at his disposal while he is waiting to be excommunicated,--for of course he will be excommunicated--"
"What does it matter!--Who cares?" said the Marquis recklessly.
"It does not matter, and nobody cares--not in actual Paris. But very very nice people in the suburbs, who are morally much worse than the Abbe, will perhaps refuse to receive him. That is why my doors are open to him, and also to his son."
"Original, as usual!"
"Perfectly! I am going to write a column for the Figaro on the amazing little scene of this morning. Au revoir! My poor horse has been waiting too long already,--I must finish my ride in the Bois, and then go to Angela Sovrani; for all the dramatis personae of today' s melodrama are at her studio, I believe."
"Who is that boy with the Cardinal?" asked the Marquis suddenly.
"You have noticed him? I also. A wonderful face! A little acolyte, no doubt. And so you will not go to Rome with me?"
"I think not," and Fontenelle smiled.
"Comme il vous plaira! I will tell Sylvie."
"The Comtesse Hermenstein is not in Paris."
"No!" and the Princesse laughed mischievously, "She is in Rome! She must have arrived there this morning. Au revoir, Marquis!" Another dazzling smile, and she was gone.
Fontenelle stood staring after her in amazement. Sylvie was in Rome then? And he had just refused to accompany the Princesse D'Agramont thither! A sudden access of irritation came over him, and he paced the room angrily. Should he also go to Rome? Never! It would seem too close a pursuit of a woman who had by her actions distinctly shown that she wished to avoid him. Now he would prove to her that he also had a will of his own. HE would leave Paris;--he would go-- yes, he would go to Africa! Everybody went to Africa. It was becoming a fashionable pasture-land for disappointed lives. He would lose himself in the desert,--and then--then Sylvie would be sorry when she did not know where he was or what he was doing! But also,-- he in his turn would not know where Sylvie was, or what she was doing! This was annoying. It was certain that she would not remain in Rome a day longer than she chose to,--well!--then where would she go? In Africa he would find some difficulty in tracing her movements. On second thoughts he resolved that he would lose himself in another fashion--and would go to Rome to do it!
"She shall not know I am there!" he said to himself, with a kind of triumph in his own decision, "I shall amuse myself--I shall see her- -but she shall not see me."
Satisfied with this as yet vague plan of entertainment, he began at once making his arrangements for departure;--meanwhile, the Princesse D'Agramont riding gracefully through the Bois on her beautiful Arab, was amusing herself with her thoughts, and weighing the PROS and CONS of the different lives of her friends, without giving the slightest consideration to her own. Here was a strange nature,--as a girl she had been intensely loving, generous and warmhearted, and she had adored her husband with exceptional faith and devotion. But the handsome Prince's amours were legion, though he had been fairly successful in concealing them from his wife, till the unlucky day when she had found him making desperate love to a common servant,--and after that her confidence, naturally, was at an end. One discovery led to another,--and the husband around whom she had woven her life's romance, sank degraded in her sight, never to rise again. She was of far too dignified and proud a nature to allow her sense of outrage and wrong to be made public, and though she never again lived with D'Agramont as his wife, she carried herself through all her duties as mistress of the household and hostess of his guests, with a brave bright gaiety, which deceived even the closest observer,--and the gossips of Paris used to declare that she did not know the extent of her husband's follies. But she did know,- -and while filled with utter disgust and loathing for his conduct she nevertheless gave him no cause of complaint against herself. And when he died of a fever brought on through over-indulgence in vice, she conformed to all the strictest usages of society,--wore her solemn widow's black for more than the accustomed period,--and then cast it off,--not to dash into her fashionable "circle" again with a splurge of colour, but rather to glide into it gracefully, a vision of refinement, arrayed in such soft hues as may be seen in some rare picture; and she took complete possession of it by her own unaided charm. No one could really tell whether she grieved for D'Agramont's death or not; no one but herself knew how she had loved him,--no one guessed what agonies of pain and shame she had endured for his sake, nor how she had wept herself half blind with despair when he died. All this she shut up in her own heart, but the working of the secret bitterness within her had made a great change in her disposition. Her nature, once as loving and confiding as that of a little child, had been so wronged in its tenderest fibres that now she could not love at all.
"Why is it," she would ask herself, "that I am totally unable to care for any living creature? That it is indifferent to me whether I see any person once, or often, or never? Why are all men like phantoms, drifting past my soul's immovability?"
The answer to her query would be, that having loved greatly once and been deceived, it was impossible to love again. Some women,--the best, and therefore the unhappiest--are born with this difficult temperament.
Now, as she rode quietly along, sometimes allowing her horse to prance upon the turf for the delight of its dewy freshness, she was weaving quite a brilliant essay on modern morals out of the scene she had witnessed at the Church of the Lorette that morning. She well knew how to use that dangerous weapon, the pen,--she could wield it like a wand to waken tears or laughter with equal ease, and since her husband's death she had devoted a great deal of time to authorship. Two witty novels, published under a nom-de-plume had already startled the world of Paris, and she was busy with a third. Such work amused her, and distracted her from dwelling too much on the destroyed illusions of the past. The Figaro snatched eagerly at everything she wrote; and it was for the Figaro that she busied her brain now, considering what she should say of the Abbe Vergniaud's confession.
"It is wisest to be a liar and remain in the Church? or tell the truth and go out of the Church?" she mused, "Unfortunately, if all priests told the truth as absolutely as the Abbe did this morning we should have hardly any of them left."
She laughed a little, and stroked her horse's neck caressingly.
"Good Rex! You and your kind never tell lies; and yet you are said to have no souls. Now I wonder why we, who are mean and cunning and treacherous and hypocritical should have immortal souls, while horses and dogs who are faithful and kind and honest should be supposed to have none."
Rex gave a gay little prance forward as one who should say, "Yes, but it is only you silly human beings who suppose such nonsense. We know what WE know;--we have our own secrets!"
"Now the Church," went on Loyse D'Agramont, pursuing the tenor of her thoughts, "is in a bad way all over the world. It is possible that God is offended with it. It is possible, that after nearly two thousand years of patience He is tired of having come down to us to teach us the path of Heaven in vain. Something out of the common has surely moved the Abbe Vergniaud to speak as he spoke to-day. He was quite unlike himself and beyond himself; if all our preachers were seized by the spirit of frankness in like manner--"
Here she broke off for she had arrived at Angela Sovrani's door, and a servant coming out, assisted her to alight, and led her horse into the courtyard there to await her leisure. She was an old friend of Angela's and was accustomed to enter the house without announcement, but on this occasion she hesitated, and after ascending the first few steps leading to the studio paused and rang the bell. Angela herself answered the summons.
"Loyse! Is it you! Oh, I am so glad!" and Angela caught her by both hands,--"You cannot imagine the confusion and trouble we have been in this morning!"
"Oh yes, I can!" answered the Princesse smiling, as she put an arm round her friend's waist and entered the studio, "You have certainly had an excitement! What of the courageous Abbe? Where is he?"
"Here!" And Angela's eyes expressed volumes,--"Here, with my uncle. They are talking together--and that young man--Cyrillon--the son, you know--"
"Is that his name?--Cyrillon?" queried the Princesse.
"Yes,--he has been brought up as a peasant. But he is not ignorant. He has written books and music, so it appears--yet he still keeps to his labour in the fields. He seems to be a kind of genius; another sort of Maeterlinck--"
"Oh, capricious Destiny!" exclaimed the Princesse, "The dear Abbe scandalises the Church by acknowledging his son to all men,--and lo!--the son he was ashamed of all these years, turns out a prodigy! The fault once confessed, brings a blessing! Angela, there is something more than chance in this, if we could only fathom it!"
"This Cyrillon is all softness and penitence now,' Angela went on, "He is overcome with grief at his murderous attempt,--and has asked his father's pardon. And they are going away together out of Paris till--"
"Till excommunication is pronounced," said the Princesse, "Yes, I thought so! I came here to place my Chateau at the Abbe's disposal. I am myself going to Rome; so he and his son can be perfectly at home there. I admire the man's courage, and above all I admire his truthfulness. But I cannot understand why he was at such pains to keep silence all these years, and THEN to declare his fault? He must have decided on his confession very suddenly?"
Angela's eyes grew dark and wistful.
"Yes," she answered slowly,--then with a sudden eagerness in her manner she added, "Do you know, Loyse, I feel as if some very strange influence had crept in among us! Pray do not think me foolish, but I assure you I have had the most curious sensations since my uncle, Cardinal Bonpre arrived from Rouen--bringing Manuel- -"
"Manuel? Is that the boy I saw in the church this morning? The boy who threw himself as a shield between Verginaud and the flying shot? Yes? And do you not know who he is?"
"No," and Angela repeated the story of the way in which Manuel had been found and rescued by the Cardinal; "You see," she continued, "it is not possible to ask him any questions since he has declined to tell us more than we already know."
"Strange!" And the Princesse D'Agramont knitted her delicate brows perplexedly. "And you have had curious feelings since he came, you say? What sort of feelings?"
"Well, you will only laugh at me," replied Angela, her cheeks paling a little as she spoke, "but it really is as if some supernatural being were present who could see all my inward thoughts,--and not only mine, but the thoughts of everyone else. Someone too who impels us to do what we have never thought of doing before--"
The Princesse opened her eyes in amazement.
"My dear girl! You must have been over-working to get such strange fancies into your head! There is nothing supernatural left to us nowadays except the vague idea of a God,--and even that we are rather tired of!"
Angela trembled and grew paler than usual.
"Do not speak in that way," she urged, "The Abbe talked in just such a light fashion until the other day here,--yet this morning I think- -nay, I am sure he believes in something better than himself at last."
The Princesse was silent for a minute.
"Well, what is to happen next?" she queried, "Excommunication of course! All brave thinkers of every time have been excommunicated, and many of our greatest and most valuable scientific works are on the Index Expurgatorius. It is my ambition to get into that Index,-- I shall never rest till I win the honour of being beside Darwin's 'Origin of Species'!"
Angela smiled, but her thoughts were elsewhere.
"I hope the Abbe will go away at once," she said meditatively, "But you have no idea how happy and at ease he is! He seems to be ready for anything."
"What does Cardinal Bonpre think?" asked the Princesse.
"My uncle never thinks in any way except the way of Christ," replied Angela. "He says, 'Thy sins be forgiven thee; arise and walk', to every soul stricken with the palsy of pain and repentance. He helps the fallen; he does not strike them down more heavily."
"Ah, so! And is he fit to be a Cardinal?" queried the Princesse D'Agramont dubiously.
Angela gave her a quick look, but had no time to reply as at that moment a servant entered and announced, "Monsignor Moretti!"
Angela started nervously.
"Moretti!" she said in a low tone, "I thought he had left Paris!"
Before she had time to say any more the visitor himself entered, a tall spare priest with a dark narrow countenance of the true Tuscan type,--a face in which the small furtive eyes twinkled with a peculiarly hard brilliancy as though they were luminous pebbles. He walked into the room with a kind of aggressive dignity common to many Italians, and made a slight sign of the cross in air as the two ladies saluted him.
"Pardon me, Mesdames, for this intrusion," he said in a harsh metallic voice, "But I hear that the Abbe Vergniaud is in this house,--and that Cardinal Felix Bonpre has received him here SINCE" (and he emphasised the word "since") "the shameful scene of this morning. My business in Paris is ended for the moment; and I am returning to Italy to-night,--but I wish to know if the Abbe has anything to say through me to His Holiness the Pope in extenuation of his conduct before I perform the painful duty of narrating this distressing affair at the Vatican."
"Will you see him for yourself, Monsignor?" said Angela quietly, offering to lead the way out of the studio, "You will no doubt obtain a more direct and explicit answer from the Abbe personally."
For a moment Moretti hesitated. Princesse D'Agramont saw his indecision, and her smile had a touch of malice in it as she said,
"It is a little difficult to know how to address the Abbe to-day, is it not, Monsignor? For of course he is no longer an Abbe--no longer a priest of Holy Church! Helas! When anybody takes to telling the truth in public the results are almost sure to be calamitous!"
Moretti turned upon her with swift asperity.
"Madame, you are no true daughter of the Church," he said, "and my calling forbids me to enter into any discussion with you!"
The Princesse gave him a charming upward glance of her bright eyes, and curtsied demurely, but he paid no heed to her obeisance, and moving away, went at once with Angela towards the Cardinal's apartments. In the antechamber he paused, hearing voices.
"Is there anyone with His Eminence, besides Vergniaud?" he asked.
"The Abbe's son Cyrillon," replied Angela timidly.
Moretti frowned.
"I will go in alone," he said, "You need not announce me. The Abbe knows me well, and--" he added with a slight sneer, "he is likely to know me better!"
Without further words he signed to Angela to retire, and passing through the antechamber, he opened the door of the Cardinal's room and entered abruptly.
XV.
The Cardinal was seated,--he rose as Moretti appeared.
"I beg your Eminence to spare yourself!" said Moretti suavely, with a deep salutation, "And to pardon me for thus coming unannounced into the presence of one so highly esteemed by the Holy Father as Cardinal Bonpre!"
The Cardinal gave a gesture of courteous deprecation; and Monsignor Moretti, lifting his, till then, partially lowered eyelids, flashed an angry regard upon the Abbe Vergniaud, who resting his back against the book-case behind him, met his glance with the most perfect composure. Close to him stood his son and would-be murderer Cyrillon,--his dark handsome face rendered even handsomer by the wistful and softened expression of his eyes, which ever and anon rested upon his father with a look of mingled wonder and respect. There was a brief silence--of a few seconds at most,--and then Moretti spoke again in a voice which thrilled with pent-up indignation, but which he endeavoured to render calm and clear as he addressed the Cardinal.
"Your Eminence is without doubt aware of the cause of my visit to you. If, as I understand, your Eminence was present at Notre Dame de Lorette this morning, and witnessed the regrettable conduct of the faithless son of the Church here present--"
"Pardon! This is my affair." interposed Vergniaud, stepping forward, "His Eminence, Cardinal Bonpre, is not at all concerned in the matter of the difficult dispute which has arisen between me and my own conscience. You call me faithless, Monsignor,--will you explain what you mean by 'faithless' under these present conditions of argument?"
"It shows the extent and hopelessness of your retrogression from all good that you should presume to ask such a question," answered Moretti, growing white under the natural darkness of his skin with an impotency of rage he could scarcely suppress, "Your sermon this morning was an open attack on the Church, and the amazing scene at its conclusion is a scandal to Christianity!"
"The attack on the Church I admit," said the Abbe quietly, "I am not the only preacher in the world who has so attacked it. Christ Himself would attack it if He were to visit this earth again!"
Moretti turned angrily towards the Cardinal.
"Your Eminence permits this blasphemy to be uttered in your presence?" he demanded.
"Nay, wherever and whenever I perceive blasphemy, my son, I shall reprove it," said the Cardinal, fixing his mild eyes steadily on Moretti's livid countenance, "I cannot at present admit that our unhappy and repentant brother here has blasphemed. In his address to his congregation to-day he denounced social hypocrisy, and also pointed out certain failings in the Church which may possibly need consideration and reform; but against the Gospel of Christ, or against the Founder of our Faith I heard no word that could be judged ill-fitting. As for the conclusion which so very nearly ended in disaster and crime, there is nothing to be said beyond the fact that both the persons concerned are profoundly sorry for their sins."
"No sorrow can wipe out such infamy--" began Moretti hotly.
"Patience! Patience, my son!" and the Cardinal raised his hand with a slight gesture of authority, "Surely we must believe the words of our Blessed Lord, 'There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons which have no need of repentance'!"
"And on this old and well-worn phrase you excuse a confessed heretic?" said Moretti, with a sneer.
"This old and well-worn phrase is the saying of our Master," answered the Cardinal firmly, "And it is as true as the truth of the sunshine which, in its old and well-worn way, lights up this world gloriously every morning! I would stake my very life on the depth and the truth of Vergniaud's penitence! Who, seeing and knowing the brand of disgrace he has voluntarily burnt into his own social name and honour, could doubt his sincerity, or refuse to raise him up, even as our Lord would have done, saying, 'Thy sins be forgiven thee! Go, and sin no more!'?"
Moretti's furtive eyes disappeared for a moment under his discoloured eyelids, which quivered rapidly like the throbbings in the throat of an angry snake. Before he could speak again however, Vergniaud interposed.
"Why trouble His Eminence with my crimes or heresies?" he said quietly, "I am grateful to him from my soul for his gentleness and charity of judgment--but I need no defence--not even from him. I am answerable to God alone!--neither to Church nor Creed! It was needful that I should speak as I spoke to-day--"
"Needful to scandalize the Church?" demanded Moretti sharply.
"The Church is not scandalized by a man who confesses himself an unworthy member of it!" returned Vergniaud, "It is better to tell the truth and go out of the Church than to remain in it as a liar and a hypocrite."
"According to your own admission you have been a liar and a hypocrite for twenty-five years!" said Moretti bitterly, "You should have made your confession before, and have made it privately. There is something unnatural and reprehensible in the sudden blazon you have made to the public of your gross immorality."
"'A sudden blazon' you call it,--" said the Abbe, "Well, perhaps it is! But murder will out, no matter how long it is kept in. You are not entirely aware of my position, Monseigneur. Have you the patience to hear a full explanation?"
"I have the patience to hear because it is my duty to hear," replied Moretti frigidly, "I am bound to convey the whole of this matter to His Holiness."
"True! That is your duty, and who shall say it is not also your pleasure!" and Vergniaud smiled a little. "Well!--Convey to His Holiness the news that I, Denis Vergniaud, am a dying man, and that knowing myself to be in that condition, and that two years at the utmost, is my extent of life on this planet, I have taken it seriously into my head to consider as to whether I am fit to meet death with a clean conscience. Death, Monsignor, admits of no lying, no politeness, no elegant sophistries! Now, the more I have considered, the more I am aware of my total unfitness to confront whatever may be waiting for me in the Afterwards of death--(for without doubt there is an afterwards,)--and being conscious of having done at least one grave injury to an innocent person, I have taken the best and quickest way to make full amends. I wronged a woman--this boy's mother--" and he indicated with a slight gesture Cyrillon, who had remained a silent witness of the scene,--"and the boy himself from early years set his mind and his will to avenge his mother's dishonour. I--the chief actor in the drama,--am thus responsible for a woman's misery and shame; and am equally responsible for the murderous spirit which has animated one, who without this feeling, would have been a promising fellow enough. The woman I wronged, alas!--is dead, and I cannot reinstate her name, save in an open acknowledgment of her child, my son. I do acknowledge him,--I acknowledge him in your presence, and therefore virtually in the presence of His Holiness. I thus help to remove the stigma I myself set on his name. Plainly speaking, Monsignor, we men have no right whatever to launch human beings into the world with the 'bar sinister' branded upon them. We have no right, if we follow Christ, to do anything that may injure or cause trouble to any other creature. We have no right to be hasty in our judgment, even of sin."
"Sin is sin,--and demands punishment--" interrupted Moretti.
"You quote the law of Moses, Monsignor! I speak with the premise 'if'. IF we follow Christ;--if we do not, the matter is of course different. We can then twist Scripture to suit our own purpose. We can organise systems which are agreeable to our own convenience or profit, but which have nothing whatever of Christ's Divine Spirit of universal love and compassion in them. My action this morning was unusual and quixotic no doubt. Yet, it seemed to me the only way to comport myself under those particular circumstances. I did a wrong-- I seek to make amends. I believe this is what God would have me do. I believe that the Supernal Forces judge our sins against each other to be of a far worse nature than sins against Church or Creed. I also believe that if we try to amend our injustices and set crooked things straight, death will be an easier business, and Heaven will come a little nearer to our souls. As for my attack on the Church--"
"Ah truly! What of your attack on the Church?" said Moretti, his small eyes glistening, and his breath going and coming quickly.
"I would say every word of it again with absolute conviction," declared Vergniaud, "for I have said nothing but the truth! There is a movement in the world, Monsignor, that all the powers of Rome are unable to cope with!--the movement of an advancing resistless force called Truth,--the Voice of God,--the Voice of Christ! Truth cannot be choked, murdered and killed nowadays as in the early Inquisition! Rather than that the Voice of Truth should be silenced or murdered now at this period of time, God will shake down Rome!"
"Not so!" exclaimed Moretti hotly--"Every nation in the world shall perish before Rome shall lose her sacred power! She is the 'headstone of the corner'--and 'upon whomsoever that stone shall fall, it shall grind him to powder!'"
"You think so?" and Verginaud shrugged his shoulders ever so slightly--"Well! For me, I believe that material as well as spiritual forces combine to fight against long-concealed sin and practised old hypocrisies. It would not surprise me if the volcanic agencies which are for ever at work beneath the blood-stained soil of Italy, were to meet under the Eternal City, and in one fell burst of flame and thunder prove its temporary and ephemeral worth! The other day an earthquake shook the walls of Rome and sent a warning shock through St. Peter's. St. Peter's, with its vast treasures, its gilded shrines, its locked-up wealth, its magnificence,--a strange contrast to Italy itself!--Italy with its people ground down under the heel of a frightful taxation, starving, and in the iron bonds of poverty! 'The Pope is a prisoner and can do nothing'? Monsignor, the Pope is a prisoner by his own choice! If he elected to walk abroad among the people and scatter Peter's Pence among the sick and needy, he would then perhaps be BEGINNING to do the duties our Lord enjoined on all His disciples!"
Moretti had stood immovable during this speech, his dark face rigid, his eyes downcast, listening to every word, but now he raised his hand with an authoritative gesture.
"Enough!" he said, "I will hear no more! You know the consequences of this at the Vatican?"
"I do."
"You are prepared to accept them?"
"As prepared as any of the truth-tellers who were burned for the love of Christ by the Inquisition," replied Vergniaud deliberately. "The world is wide,--there is room for me in it outside the Church."
"One would imagine you were bitten by the new 'Christian Democratic' craze," said Moretti with a cold smile, "And that you were a reader and follower of the Socialist, Gys Grandit!"
At this name, Vergniaud's son Cyrillon stirred, and lifting his dark handsome head turned his flashing eyes full on the speaker.
"Did you address me, Monsignor?" he queried, in a voice rich with the musical inflexions of Southern France, "I am Gys Grandit!"
Had he fired another pistol shot in the quiet room as he had fired it in the church, it could hardly have created a more profound sensation.
"You--you--" stammered Moretti, retreating from him as from some loathsome abomination, "You--Gys Grandit!"
"You, Cyrillon!--you!--you, my son!"--and the Abbe almost lost breath in the extremity of his amazement, while Cardinal Bonpre half rose from his chair doubting whether he had heard aright. Gys Grandit!--the writer of fierce political polemics and powerful essays that were the life and soul, meat and drink of all the members of the Christian Democratic party!
"Gys Grandit is my nom-de-plume," pursued the young man, composedly, "I never had any hope of being acknowledged as Cyrillon Vergniaud, son of my father,--I had truly no name and resolved to create one. That is the sole explanation. My history has made me--not myself."
There was a dead pause. At last Moretti spoke.
"I have no place here!" he said, biting his lips hard to keep them from trembling with rage, "This house which I thought was the abode of a true daughter of the Church, Donna Sovrani, is apparently for the moment a refuge for heretics. And I find these heretics kept in countenance by Cardinal Felix Bonpre, whose reputation for justice and holiness should surely move him to denounce them were he not held in check by some malignant spirit of evil, which seems to possess this atmosphere--"
"Monsignor Moretti," interposed the Cardinal with dignity, "it is no part of justice or holiness to denounce anything or anybody till the full rights of the case have been heard. I was as unaware as yourself that this young man, Cyrillon Vergniaud, was the daring writer who has sent his assumed name of 'Gys Grandit' like a flame through Europe. I have read his books, and cannot justly denounce them, because they are expressed in the language of one who is ardently and passionately seeking for Truth. Equally, I cannot denounce the Abbe, because he has confessed his sin, declared himself as he is, to the public, saved his son from being a parricide, and has to some extent we trust, made his peace with God. If you can find any point on which, as a servant of Christ, I can denounce these two human beings who share with me the strange and awful privileges of life and death, and the promise of an immortal hereafter, I give you leave to do so. The works of Gys Grandit do not blaspheme Christ,--they call, they clamour, they appeal for Christ through all and in all--"
"And with all this clamour and appeal their writer is willing to become a murderer!" said Moretti satirically.
Young Vergniaud sprang forward.
"Monsignor, in the name of the Master you profess to serve I would advise you to set a watch upon your tongue!" he said, "Granted that I was willing to murder the man who had made my mother's life a misery, I was also willing to answer to God for it! I saw my mother die--" here he gave a quick glance towards the Abbe who instinctively shrank at his words, "I shall pain you, my father, by what I say, but the pain is perhaps good for us both! I repeat--I saw my mother die. She passed away uncomforted after a long life of patient loneliness and sorrow--for she was faithful to the last, ever faithful! I have seen her weep in the silence of the night!--I have heard her ever since I was able to understand the sound of weeping! Oh, those tears!--Do you not think God has seen them! She worked and toiled, and starved herself to educate me,--she had no friends, for she had 'fallen', they said, and sometimes she could get no employment, and often we starved together; and when I thought of the man who had done this thing, even as a young boy I said to myself, 'I will kill him!' She did not mean, poor mother, to curse her lover to me--but unconsciously she did,--her sorrow was so great--her loneliness so bitter!"
Moretti gave a gesture of impatience and contempt. Cyrillon noted it, and his dark eyes flashed, but he went on steadily,--
"And then I saw her die--she stretched her poor thin hard-working hands out to God, and over and over again she muttered and moaned in her fever the refrain of an old peasant song we have in Touraine, 'Oh, la tristesse d'avoir aime!' If you had heard her--if you had seen her--if you had, or have a heart to feel, nerves to wrench, a brain to rack, blood to be stung to frenzy, you would,--seeing your mother perish thus,--have thought, that to kill the man who had made such a wreck of a sweet pure life, would be a just, aye even a virtuous deed! I thought so. But my intended vengeance was frustrated--whether by the act of God, who can say? But the conduct of the man whom I am now proud to call my father--"
"You have great cause for pride!" said Moretti sarcastically.
"I think I have"--said the young man, "In the close extremity of death at my hands, he won my respect. He shall keep it. It will be my glory now to show him what a son's love and pardon may be. If it be true as I understand, that he is attacked by a disease which needs must be fatal, his last hours will not be desolate! It may be that I shall give him more comfort than Churches,--more confidence than Creeds! It may be that the clasp of my hand in his may be a better preparation for his meeting with God,--and my mother,--than the touch of the Holy Oils in Extreme Unction!"
"Like all your accursed sect, you blaspheme the Sacraments"-- interrupted Moretti indignantly--"And in the very presence of one of her chiefest Cardinals, you scorn the Church!"
Cyrillon gave a quick gesture of emphatic denial.
"Monsignor, I do not scorn the Church,--but I think that honesty and fair dealing with one another is better than any Church! Christ had no Church. He built no temples, He amassed no wealth,--He preached simply to those who would hear Him under the arching sky,--in the open air! He prophesied the fall of temples; 'In this place,' He said, 'is One greater than the temple.' [Footnote: Matt. xii. v. 6.] He sought to destroy long built-up hypocrisies. 'My house is called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.' Thieves, not only of gold, but of honour!--thieves of the very Gospel, which has been tampered with and twisted to suit the times, the conditions and opinions of varying phases of priestcraft. Who that has read, and thought, and travelled and studied the manuscripts hidden away in the old monasteries of Armenia and Syria, believes that the Saviour of the world ever condescended to 'pun' on the word Petrus, and say, 'On this Rock (or stone) I will build my Church,' when He already knew that He had to deal with a coward who would soon deny Him?"
"Enough! I will hear no further!" cried Moretti, turning livid with fury--"Cardinal Bonpre, I appeal to you . . ."
But Cyrillon went on unheedingly,--
"Beware of that symbol of your Church, Monsignor! It is a very strange one! It seems about to be expanded into a reality of dreadful earnest! 'I know not the man,' said Peter. Does not the glittering of the world's wealth piled into the Vatican,--useless wealth lying idle in the midst of hideous beggary and starvation,-- proclaim with no uncertain voice, 'I KNOW NOT THE MAN'? The Man of sorrows,--the Man of tender and pitying heart,--the Man who could not send the multitude away without bread, and compassed a miracle to give it to them,--the Man who wept for a friend's death,--who took little children in His arms and blessed them,--who pardoned the unhappy outcast and said, 'Sin no more,'--who was so selfless, so pure, so strong, so great, that even sceptics, while denying His Divinity, are compelled to own that His life and His actions were more Divine than those of any other creature in human shape that has ever walked the earth! Monsignor, there is no true representative of Christ in this world!"
"Not for heretics possibly," said Moretti disdainfully.
"For no one!" said Cyrillon passionately--"For no poor sinking, seeking soul is there any such visible comforter! But there is a grand tendency in Mankind to absorb His Spirit and His teaching;--to turn from forms and shadows of faith to the Faith itself,--from descriptions of a possible heaven to the REAL Heaven, which is being disclosed to us in transcendent glimpses through the jewel-gates of science! There were twelve gates in the visioned heaven of St. John,--and each gate was composed of one pearl! Truly do the scoffers say that never did any planetary sea provide such pearls as these! No,--for they were but prophetic emblems of the then undiscovered Sciences. Ah, Monsignor!--and what of the psychic senses and forces?--forces which we are just beginning to discover and to use,--forces which enable me to read your mind at this present moment and to see how willingly you would send me to the burning, Christian as you call yourself, for my thoughts and opinions!--as your long-ago predecessors did with all men who dared to reason for themselves! But that time has passed, Monsignor; the Spirit of Christ in the world has conquered the Church THERE!"
The words rushed from his lips with a fervid eloquence that was absolutely startling,--his eyes were aglow with feeling--his face so animated and inspired, that it seemed as though a flame behind it illumined every feature. Abbe Vergniaud, astonished and overcome, laid a trembling hand on the arm of the passionate speaker with a gesture more of appeal than restraint, and the young man caught that hand within his own and held it fast. Moretti for a moment fixed his eyes upon father and son with an expression of intense hatred that darkened his face with a deep shadow as of a black mask,--and then without a word deliberately turned his back upon both.
"Your Eminence has heard all this," he said coldly, addressing the Cardinal who sat rigidly in his chair, silent and very pale.
"I have," replied Bonpre in a low strained tone.
"And I presume your Eminence permits--?"
"Why talk of permission?" interrupted the Cardinal, raising his eyes with a sorrowful look, "Who is to permit or deny freedom of speech in these days? Have I--have you--the right to declare that a man shall not express his thoughts? In what way are we to act? Deny a hearing? We cannot--we dare not--not if we obey our Lord, who says, 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.' If we ask for ourselves to be heard, we must also hear."
"We may hear--but in such a case as the present one must we not also condemn?" demanded Moretti, watching the venerable prelate narrowly.
"We can only condemn in the case of a great sin," replied Bonpre gently, "and even then our condemnation must be passed with fear and trembling, and with full knowledge of all the facts pertaining to the error. 'Judge not that ye be not judged.' We are told plainly that our brother may sin against us not only seven times but seventy times seven, and still we are bound to forgive, to sustain, to help, and not to trample down the already fallen."
"These are your Eminence's opinions?" said Moretti.
"Most assuredly! Are they not yours?"
Moretti smiled coldly.
"No. I confess they are not! I am a faithful servant of the Church; and the Church is a system of moral government in which, if the slightest laxity be permitted, the whole fabric is in danger--"
"A house of cards then, which a breath may blow down!" interposed "Gys Grandit," otherwise Cyrillon Vergniaud, "Surely an unstable foundation for the everlasting ethics of Christ!"
"I did not speak to you, sir," said Moretti, turning upon him angrily.
"I know you did not. I spoke to you," answered the young man coolly, "I have as much right to speak to you, as you have to speak to me, or to be silent--if you choose. You say the Church is a system of moral government. Well, look back on the past, and see what it has done in the way of governing. In the very earliest days of Christianity, when men were simple and sincere, when their faith in the power of the Divine things was strong and pure, the Church was indeed a safeguard, and a powerful restraint on man's uneducated licentiousness and inherent love of strife. But when the lust of gain began to creep like a fever into the blood of those with whom worldly riches should be as nothing compared to the riches of the mind, the heart, and the spirit, then the dryrot of hypocrisy set in--then came craftiness, cruelty, injustice, and pitilessness, and such grossness of personal conduct as revolts even the soul of an admitted sinner. Moral government? Where is it to day? Look at France--Italy--Spain! Count up the lies told by the priests in these countries to feed the follies of the ignorant! Did Christ ever tell lies? No. Then why, if you are His follower, do you tell them?"
"I repeat, I did not speak to you," said Moretti, his eyes sparkling with fury,--"To me you are a heretic, accursed, and excommunicate!-- thrust out of salvation, and beyond my province to deal with!"
"Oh, that a man should be thrust out of salvation in these Christian days!" exclaimed Cyrillon with a flashing look of scorn, "And that he should find a servant of Christ to tell him so! Accursed and excommunicate! Then I am a kind of leper in the social community! And you, as a disciple of your Master, should heal me of my infirmity--and cleanse me of my Leprosy! Loathsome as leprosy is whether of mind or body, Christ never thrust it out of salvation!"
"The leper must wish to be cleansed!" said Moretti fiercely, "If he does not himself seek to be healed of his evil, no miracle can help him."
"Oh but I do seek!" And young Vergniaud threw back his handsome head with a splendid gesture of appeal, "With all my soul, if I am diseased, I wish to be cleansed! Will YOU cleanse me? CAN you? I wish to stand up whole and pure, face to face with the Divine in this world, and praise Him for His goodness to me. But surely if He is to be found anywhere it is in the Spirit of Truth! Not in any sort of a lie! Now, according to His own words the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of Truth. 'When the Spirit of Truth is come He will guide you into all Truth.' And what then? Monsignor, it is somewhat dangerous to oppose the Spirit of Truth, whether that Force speak through the innocent lips of a child or the diseased ones of a leper! 'For whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man it shall be forgiven him, BUT WHOSOEVER SPEAKETH AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST'--or the Spirit of Truth, known sometimes as Inspiration . . . "IT SHALL NOT BE FORGIVEN HIM in this world, neither in the world to come.' That is a terrible curse, which an ocean of Holy Water could scarcely wash away!"
"Your argument is wide of the mark," said Moretti, impatiently, yet forced in spite of himself to defend his position, "the Church is not opposed to Truth but to Atheism."
"Atheism! There is no such thing as a real atheist in the world!" declared Cyrillon passionately, "No reasoning human being alive, that has not felt the impress of the Divine Image in himself and in all the universe around him! He may, through apathy and the falsehoods of priestcraft, have descended into callousness, indifference and egotism, but he knows well that that impress cannot be stamped out--that he will have to account for his part, however small it be, in the magnificent pageant of life and work, for he has not been sent into it 'on chance.' Inasmuch as if there is chance in one thing there must be chance in another, and the solar system is too mathematically designed to be a haphazard arrangement. With all our cleverness, our logic, our geometrical skill, we can do nothing so exact! As part of the solar system, you and I have our trifling business to enact, Monsignor,--and to enact it properly, and with satisfaction to our Supreme Employer, it seems to me that if we are honest with the world and with each other, we shall be on the right road."
"For my part, I am perfectly honest with you," said Moretti smiling darkly, "I told you, and I tell you again, that to me you are a heretic, accursed and excommunicate. You will, as the democrat 'Gys Grandit,' no doubt feel a peculiar pleasure when your father is also declared accursed and excommunicate. I have said, and I say again, that the Church is a system of moral government, and that no laxity can be permitted. It is a system founded on the Gospel of our Lord, but to obey the commands of our Lord to the letter we should have to find another world to live in--"
"Pardon me--I ask for information," interposed Cyrillon, "You of course maintain that Christ was God in Man?"
"Most absolutely!"
"And yet you say that to obey His commands to the letter we should have to find another world to live in! Strange! Since He made the world and knows all our capabilities of progress! But have you never fancied it possible that we may be forced to obey His commands to the letter, or perish for refusing to do so?"
Moretti made as though he would have sprung forward,--his face was drawn and rigid, his lips tightly compressed, but he had no answer to this unanswerable logic. He therefore took refuge in turning brusquely away as before and was about to address himself to Bonpre, but stopped short, as he perceived Manuel, who had entered while the conversation was going on, and who now stood quietly by the Cardinal's chair in an attitude of composed attention. Moretti glanced at him with a vexed sense of irritation and reluctant wonder;--then moistening his dry lips he began,
"I am bound to regret deeply that your Eminence has allowed this painful discussion to take place in your presence without reproof. But I presume you are aware of the responsibility incurred?"
The Cardinal slowly inclined his head in grave assent.
"In relating the scene of to-day to His Holiness, I shall be compelled to mention the attitude you have maintained throughout the conversation."
"You are at perfect liberty to do so, my son," said Bonpre with unruffled gentleness.
Moretti hesitated. His eyes again rested on Manuel.
"Pardon me," he said suddenly and irrelevantly, "This boy . . ."
"Is a foundling," said the Cardinal, "He stays with me till I can place him well in the world. He has no friends."
"He took some part in the affair of this morning, I believe?" queried Moretti, with a doubtful air.
"He saved my life," said Abbe Vergniaud advancing, "It was not particularly worth saving--but he did it. And I owe him much--for in saving me, he also saved Cyrillon from something worse than death."
"Naturally you must be very gratefu," retorted Moretti satirically, "The affection of a son you have denied for twenty-five years must be exceedingly gratifying to you!" He paused--then said, "Does this boy belong to the Church?"
"No," said Manuel, answering for himself, "I have no Church."
"No Church!" exclaimed Moretti, "His Eminence must educate you, boy. You must be received."
"Yes," said Manuel, raising his eyes, and fixing them full on Moretti, "I must be received! I need education to understand the Church. And so,--for me to be received might be difficult!"
XVI.
As he thus spoke, slowly and with an exquisite softness, something in his voice, manner, or words aroused a sudden and violent antipathy in Moretti's mind. He became curiously annoyed, without any possible cause, and out of his annoyance answered roughly.
"Ignorance is always difficult to deal with," he said, "But if it is not accompanied by self-will or obstinacy--(and boys of your age are apt to be self-willed and obstinate)--then much can be done. The Church has infinite patience even with refractory sinners."
"Has it?" asked Manuel simply, and his clear eyes, turning slowly towards Vergniaud and his son, rested there a moment, and then came back to fix the same steady look upon Moretti's face. Not another word did he say,--but Moretti flushed darkly, and anon grew very pale. Restraining his emotions however by an effort, he addressed himself with cold formality once more to the Abbe.
"You have no explanation then to offer to His Holiness, beyond what you have already said?"
"None!" replied Vergniaud steadily. "The reasons for my conduct I think are sufficiently vital and earnest to be easily understood."
"And your Eminence has nothing more to say on this matter?" pursued Moretti, turning to the Cardinal.
"Nothing, my son! But I would urge that the Holy Father should extend his pardon to the offenders, the more so as one of them is on the verge of that land where we 'go hence and are no more seen.'"
Moretti's eyelids quivered, and his lips drew together in a hard and cruel line.
"I will assuredly represent your wishes to His Holiness," he replied, "But I doubt whether they will meet with so much approval as surprise and regret. I have the honour to wish your Eminence farewell!"
"Farewell, my son!" said the Cardinal mildly, "Benedicite!"
Moretti bent down, as custom forced him to do, under the gently uttered blessing, and the extended thin white hand that signed the cross above him. Then with a furtive under-glance at Manuel, whose quiet and contemplative observation of him greatly vexed and disturbed his composure, he left the room.
There was a short silence. Then Abbe Vergniaud, somewhat hesitatingly, approached Bonpre.
"I much fear, my dear friend, that all this means unpleasantness for you at the Vatican," he said, "And I sincerely grieve to be the means of bringing you into any trouble."
"Nay, there should be no trouble," said Bonpre quietly, "Nothing has happened which should really cause me any perplexity--on the contrary, events have arranged themselves so that there shall be no obstacle in the way of speaking my mind. I have journeyed far from my diocese to study and to discover for myself the various phases of opinion on religious matters in these days, and I am steadily learning much as I go. I regret nothing, and would have nothing altered,--for I am perfectly confident that in all the things I meet, or may have to consider, my Master is my Guide. All is well wherever we hear His Voice;--all things work for the best when we are able to perceive His command clearly, and have strength and resolution enough to forsake our sins and follow Him."
As he spoke, a tranquil smile brightened his venerable features, and seeing the fine small hand of Manuel resting on his chair, he laid his own wrinkled palm over it and clasped it tenderly. Cyrillon Vergniaud, moved by a quick impulse, suddenly advanced towards him.
"Monseigneur," he said, with unaffected deference, "You are much more than a Cardinal,--you are a good and honest man! And that you serve Christ purely is plainly evidenced in your look and bearing. Do me one favour! Extend your pardon to me for my almost committed crime of to-day,--and give me your blessing! I will try to be worthy of it!"
The Cardinal was silent for a few minutes looking at him earnestly.
"My blessing is of small value," he said, "And yet I do not think you would ask it for mere mockery of an old man's faith. I should like,--" here he paused--then slowly went on again, "I should like to say a few words to you if I might--to ask you one or two questions concerning yourself--"
"Ask anything you please, Monseigneur," replied Cyrillon, "I will answer you frankly and fully. I have never had any mysteries in my life save one,--that of my birth, which up till to day was a stigma and a drawback;--but now, I feel I may be proud of my father. A man who sacrifices his entire social reputation and position to make amends for a wrong done to the innocent is worthy of honour."
"I grant it!" said the Cardinal, "But you yourself--why have you made a name which is like a firebrand to start a conflagration of discord in Europe?--why do you use your gifts of language and expression to awaken a national danger which even the strongest Government may find itself unable to stand against? I do not blame you till I hear,--till I know;--but your writings,--your appeals for truth in all things,--are like loud clarion blasts which may awaken more evil than good."
"Monseigneur, the evil is not of my making,--it exists!" replied Cyrillon, "My name, my writings,--are only as a spark from the huge smouldering fire of religious discontent in the world. If it were not MY name it would be another's. If _I_ did not write or speak, someone else would write and speak--perhaps better--perhaps not so well. At any rate I am sincere in my convictions, and write from the fulness of the heart. I do not care for money--I make none at all by literature,--but I earn enough by my labour in the fields to keep me in food and lodging. I have no desire for fame,--except in so far as my name may serve as an encouragement and help to others. If you care to hear my story--"
"I should appreciate your confidence greatly," said the Cardinal earnestly, "The Fates have made you a leading spirit of the time,-- it would interest me to know your thoughts and theories. But if you would prefer not to speak--"
"I generally prefer not to speak," replied Cyrillon, "But to-day is one of open confession,--and I think too that it is sometimes advisable for men of the Church to understand and enter into the minds of those who are outside the Church,--who will have no Church,--not from disobedience or insubordination, but simply because they do not find God or Christ in that institution as it at present exists. And nowadays we are seeking for God strenuously and passionately! We have found Him too in places where the Church assured us He was not and could not be."
"Is there any portion of life where God is not?" asked Manuel gently.
Cyrillon's dark eyes softened as he met the boy's glance.
"No, dear child!--truly there is not,--but the priests do nothing to maintain or to prove that," he replied; "and the more the world lifts itself higher and higher into the light, the more we shall perceive God, and the less we will permit anything to intervene between ourselves and Him. But you are too young to understand--"
"No, not at all too young to understand!" answered Manuel, "Not at all too young to understand that God is love, and pardon, and patience;--and that wheresoever men are intolerant, uncharitable, and bigoted, there they straightway depart from God and know Him not at all."
"Truly that is how I understand Christianity," said Cyrillon, "But for so simple and plain a perception of duty one is called atheist and socialist, and one's opinions are branded as dangerous to the community. Truth is dangerous, I know--but why?"
"Would that not take a century to explain?" said the silvery voice of the Princesse D'Agramont, who entered with Angela at that moment, and made her deep obeisance before the Cardinal, glancing inquisitively as she did so at Manuel who still stood resting against the prelate's chair, "Pardon our abrupt appearance, Monseigneur, but Angela and I are moved by the spirit of curiosity!- -and if we are swept out of the Church like straws before the wind for our impertinence, we care not! Monsignor Moretti has just left the house, wrapt up in his wrath like a bird of prey in a thundercloud, muttering menaces against 'Gys Grandit' the Socialist writer. Now what in the world has Gys Grandit to do with him or with us? Salut, cher Abbe!"--and she gave Vergniaud her hand with charming friendliness; "I came here really to see you, and place the Chateau D'Agramont at your disposal, while I am away passing the winter in Italy. Pray make yourself at home there--and your son also . . ."
"Madame," said the Abbe, profoundly touched by the sincerity of her manner, and by the evident cordiality of her intention, "I thank you from my heart for your friendship at this moment when friendship is most needed! But I feel I ought not to cast the shadow of my presence on your house under such circumstances--and as for my son-- it would certainly be unwise for you to extend your gracious hospitality to him . . . he is my son--yes truly!--and I acknowledge him as such; but he is also another person of his own making--Gys Grandit!"
Angela Sovrani gave a slight cry, and a wave of colour flushed her face,--the Princesse stood amazed.
"Gys Grandit!" she echoed in a low tone, "And Vergniaud's son! Grand Dieu! Is it possible!" Then advancing, she extended both her hands to Cyrillon, "Monsieur, accept my homage! You have a supreme genius,--and with it you command more than one-half of the thoughts of France!"
Cyrillon took her hands,--lightly pressed, and released them.
"Madame, you are too generous!"
But even while he exchanged these courtesies with her, his eyes were fixed on Angela Sovrani, who, moving close to her uncle's chair, had folded her hands upon its sculptured edge and now stood beside it, a graceful nymph-like figure of statuesque repose. But her breath came and went quickly, and her face was very pale.
"No wonder Monsignor Moretti was so exceedingly angry," resumed the Princesse D'Agramont with a smile, "I understand the position now. It is a truly remarkable one. Monseigneur," this with a profound reverence to the Cardinal, "you have found it difficult to be umpire in the discussion."
"The discussion was not mine," said the Cardinal slowly, "But the cause of the trouble is a point which affects many,--and I am one of those who desire to hear all before I presume to judge one. I have asked the son of my old friend Vergniaud to tell me what led him to make his assumed name one of such terror and confusion in the world; he is but six-and-twenty, and yet . . ."
"And yet people talk much of me you would say, Monseigneur," said Cyrillon, a touch of scorn lighting up his fine eyes, "True, and it is easy to be talked of. That is nothing, I do not wish for that, except in so far as it helps me to attain my ambition."
"And that ambition is?" queried the Princesse.
"To lead!" answered Cyrillon with a passionate gesture, "To gather the straying thoughts of men into one burning focus--and turn THAT fire on the world!"
They were all silent for a minute--then the Princesse D'Agramont spoke again--
"But--Pardon me! Then you were about to destroy all your own chances of the future in your wild impulse of this morning?"
"Oh, Madame, it was no wild impulse! When a man takes an oath by the side of a dead woman, and that woman his mother, he generally means to keep it! And I most resolutely meant to kill my father and make of myself a parricide. But I considered my mother had been murdered too--socially and morally--and I judged my vengeance just. If it had not been for the boy there--" and he glanced at Manuel, "I should certainly have fulfilled my intention."
"And then there would have been no Abbe Vergniaud, and no 'Gys Grandit,'" said the Princesse lightly, endeavouring to change the sombre tone of the conversation,--"and the 'Christian Democratic' party would have been in sackcloth and ashes!"
"The Christian Democratic party!" echoed the Cardinal, "What do they mean? What do they want?"
"Christianity, Monseigneur! That is all!" replied Cyrillon, "All-- but so much! You asked me for my history--will you hear it now?"
There was an immediate murmur of assent, and the group around Cardinal Bonpre were soon seated--all save Manuel, who remained standing. Angela sat on a cushion at her uncle's feet, and her deep violet eyes were full of an eager, almost feverish interest which she could scarcely conceal; and the Abbe Vergniaud, vitally and painfully concerned as he was in the narrative about to be told, could not help looking at her, and wondering at the extraordinary light and beauty of her face thus transfigured by an excitation of thought. Was she a secret follower of his son's theories, he wondered? Composing himself in his chair, he sat with bent head, marvelling as he heard the story of the bold and fearless and philosophic life that had sprung into the world all out of his summer's romance with a little innocent girl, whom he had found praying to her guardian angel.
"It is not always ourselves," began Cyrillon in his slow, emphatic, yet musical voice, "who are responsible for the good or the evil we may do in our lives. Much of our character is formed by the earliest impressions of childhood--and my earliest impressions were those of sorrow. I started life with the pulse of my mother's broken heart beating in me,--hence my thoughts were sombre, and of an altogether unnatural character to a child of tender years. We lived--my mother and I--in a small cottage on the edge of a meadow outside the quaint old city of Tours--a meadow, full at all seasons, of the loveliest wild flowers, but sweetest in the springtime when the narcissi bloomed, lifting their thousand cups of sweet perfume like incense to the sky. I used to sit among their cool green stems,--thinking many thoughts, chief among which was a wonder why God had made my little mother so unhappy. I heard afterwards that God was not to blame,--only man, breaking God's laws of equity. She was a good brave woman, for despite her loneliness and tears, she worked hard;- -worked to send me to school, and to teach me all she herself knew-- which was little enough, poor soul,--but she studied in order to instruct me,--and often when I slept the unconscious sleep of healthy childhood, she was up through half the night spelling out abstruse books, difficult enough for an educated woman to master, but for a peasant--(she was nothing more)--presenting almost superhuman obstacles. I was very quick to learn, and her loving patience was not wasted upon me;--but when I was about eleven years old I resolved that I could no longer burden her with the expenses of my life--so without asking her consent, I hired myself out to a farmer, to clear weeds from his fields, and so began to earn my bread, which is the best and noblest form of knowledge existing in the world for all of us. With the earning of my body's keep came spiritual independence, and young as I was I began to read and consider for myself--till when I was about fifteen chance brought me across the path of a man whose example inspired me and decided my fate, named Aubrey Leigh."
Angela gave a slight exclamation of surprise, and Cyrillon turned his dark eyes upon her.
"Yes, mademoiselle!--I am aware that he has been in Paris lately. No doubt you know him. Certainly he is born to be a leader of men, and if a noble life and unsullied character, together with eloquence, determination, and steadfastness of purpose can help him to fulfil his mission, he will assuredly succeed. He is from America, though born of British parents, and the first thing I gathered from him was an overwhelming desire to study and to master the English language-- not because it was English, but because it was the universal language spoken by America. I felt from what he said then,--and I feel still from what I have learnt and know now,--that America has all the future in the hollow of her hand. My intention, had I succeeded in my revengeful attempt this morning, was to escape to America immediately, and from there write under the nom de plume which I have already made known. I can write as easily in English as in French,--for my friend Aubrey Leigh was very kind and took a great liking to me, and stayed in Touraine for a year and a half, simply for the pleasure of instructing me and grafting his theories upon my young and aspiring mind. And now we are as one in our hopes and endeavours, and the years make little disparity between us. He was twenty-two when I was but fifteen,--but now that I am twenty-six and he thirty-three we are far better matched associates. From him I learnt much of the discontents,--ethical and religious,--of the world; from him I learnt how to speak in public. He was then an actor, a sort of wandering 'Bohemian,'--but he soon tired of the sordidness of the stage and aspired to higher platforms of work, and he had already begun to lead the people by his powers of oratory, as he leads them now. I heard him speak in French as fluently as in English; and I resolved on my part to speak likewise in English as easily as he did in French. And when we parted it was with a mutual resolve TO LEAD!--to lead--and ever still to lead!--we would starve on our theories, we said, but we would speak out if it cost us our very lives. To earn daily bread I managed to obtain steady employment as a labourer in the fields,--and I soon gained sufficient to keep my mother and myself. My friend Aubrey had imbued me thoroughly with the love of incessant hard work; there was no disgrace, he said, in digging the soil, if the brain were kept working as well as the hands. And I did keep my brain working; I allowed it also to lie fallow, and to absorb everything of nature that was complex, grand and beautiful,--and from such studies I learnt the goodness and the majesty of the Creator as they are never found in human expositions of Him made by the preachers of creeds. At eighteen I made my first public address,--and the next year published my first book in Tours. But though I won an instant success my soul was hampered and heavy with the burning thought of vengeance; and this thought greatly hindered the true conceptions of life that I desired to entertain. When my mother died, and her failing voice crooned for the last time, 'Ah, la tristesse d'avoir aime!' the spark of hatred I had cherished all the years of my life for my father burst into a flame, and leapt up to its final height this morning as you saw. Now it has gone out into dust and ashes-- the way of all such flames! I have been spared for better things I hope. What I have written and done, France knows,--but my thoughts are not limited to France, they seek a wider horizon. France is a decaying nation--her doom is sealed. I work and write for the To-Be, not the Has-Been. Such as my life is, it has never been darkened or brightened by love of any sort, save that which my mother gave me. Your Eminence," and he turned towards the Cardinal, "asks me why I inculcate theories which suggest change, terror and confusion;-- Monseigneur, terror and confusion can never be caused save among the ranks of those who have secret reason to be terrorised! There is nothing terrifying in Truth to those who are true! If I distract and alarm unworthy societies, revolting hypocrism, established shams and miserable conventions, I am only the wielder of the broom that sweeps out the cobwebs and the dust from a dirty house. My one desire is to make the habitation of Christian souls clean! Terror and confusion there will be,--there must be;--the time is ripe for it--none of us can escape it--it is the prophesied period of 'men's hearts failing them for fear, and looking after those things which are coming on the earth.' I have not made the time. I am born OF it- -one WITH it;--God arranges these things. I am not working for self or for money,--I can live on bread and herbs and water. I want no luxurious surroundings,--no softnesses--no delicacies--no tendernesses--no sympathies! I set my face forward in the teeth of a thousand winds of opposition, forward still forward! I seek nothing for my own personal needs! I know that nothing can hinder me or keep me back! Nothing! Monseigneur, I voice the cry of multitudes!--they have, as it were, been wandering in the wilderness listening to the Gospel for many days,--days which have accumulated to more than eighteen hundred years; just as they did of old,--only the Master did not send them away hungry--He fed them lest they should 'faint by the way.' He thought of that possibility!--we seldom care how many faint by the way, or die in the effort to live! Monseigneur, I must--I will speak for the dumb mouths of the nations! And every unit that can so speak, or can so write, should hasten to turn itself into a Pentecostal flame of fire to blaze and burn a warning upon the verge of this new century,--causing men to prophesy with divers tongues, of the Truth of God,--not of the lies that have been made to represent Him!"
Felix Bonpre raised one hand with a slight gesture enjoining silence, and seemed wrapped for a moment in painful meditation. Angela looking anxiously up at him caught, not his glance, but that of Manuel, who smiled at her encouragingly. Presently the Cardinal spoke,--gently and with a kind of austere patience.
"Am I to understand from your speech, my son, and the work of your life, that you consider the Church a lie? I put the question plainly; but I do not ask it either to reproach or intimidate you. I am well aware I can do neither. Thought is free to the individual as well as to the nations; and whereas, in past time we had one man who could think and speak, we have now a thousand! We are unfortunately apt to forget the spread of education;--but a man who thinks as you do, and dares all things for the right to act upon his thought, should surely be able to clearly explain his reasons for arming himself against any outwardly expressed form of faith, which has received the acceptance and submission of the world?"
"Monseigneur, I do not attack any faith! Faith is necessary,--faith is superb! I honour this uplifting virtue,--whether I find it in the followers of the Talmud or the Koran, or the New Testament, and, personally speaking, I would die for my belief in the great name and ethical teaching of Christ. I attack the Church--yes,--and why? Because it has departed from the Faith! Because it is a mere system now,--corrupt in many parts, as all systems must naturally become when worn out by long usage. In many ways it favours stupid idolatries, and in others it remains deaf and blind and impervious to the approach of great spiritual and religious facts, which are being made splendidly manifest by Science. Why, there is not a miracle in the Testament that science will not make possible!--there is not a word Christ ever spoke that shall not be proved true! And may I not be called a Christian? I may,--I must,--I will be,--for I am! But hypocrisy, false measures, perverted aims, and low pandering to ignorance and brutality, vile superstition and intimidation-- these things must be destroyed if the Church is to last with honour to itself and with usefulness to others. To-day, over in England, they are quarrelling with bitter acrimony concerning forms and outward symbols of religion, thus fulfilling the words of the Lord, 'Ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter but within ye are full of extortion and excess.' Now, if the Spirit of Christ were at all in these men who thus argue, there would be no trouble about forms or symbols of faith,--there would be too much of the faith itself for any such petty disputation. Monseigneur, I swear to you, I say nothing, teach nothing but what is the straight and true command of Christ! . . . no more, but also no less!"
Moved by the young man's eloquence, the Cardinal looked at him straightly in the eyes.
"You speak well," he said, "Some people would tell you that you have that fluency of tongue which is judged dangerous. But danger is after all only for those who have something to fear. If we of the Church are pure in our intent nothing should disturb our peace,-- nothing should move us from our anchorage. Your ideas, you say, are founded on the Master's Word?"
"Entirely," replied Cyrillon, "I am working,--Aubrey Leigh is working,--we are all working for a House of Praise more than a Place of Prayer. We want to give thanks for what we are, and what, if we follow the sane and healthy laws of life, we may be,--rather than continue the clamour for more benefits when we have already received, and are receiving so much."
"Would you not pray at all then?" asked Bonpre.
"Yes--for others, not for ourselves! And then not as the Church prays. Her form of service is direct disobedience!"
"In what way?"
"Monseigneur, I always preface my remarks on these subjects with the words 'IF we believe in Christ.' I say IF we believe, we must accept His commands; and they are plain enough. 'WHEN YE PRAY, USE NOT VAIN REPETITIONS AS THE HEATHEN DO, FOR THEY THINK THEY SHALL BE HEARD FOR THEIR MUCH SPEAKING. BE NOT YE THEREFORE LIKE UNTO THEM, FOR YOUR FATHER KNOWETH WHAT THINGS YE HAVE NEED OF BEFORE YE ASK HIM.' Now if this is to be understood as the command of Christ, the Messenger of God, do we not deliberately act against it in all directions? Vain repetitions! The Church is full of them,--choked with them! The priests who order us to say ten or twenty 'Paternosters' by way of penance, are telling us to do exactly what Christ commanded us not to do! The terrible Litany of the Protestant Church, with its everlasting 'Good Lord deliver us,' is another example of vain repetition. Again--think of these words--'When thou prayest, thou shalt NOT BE AS THE HYPOCRITES ARE, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues, and at the corners of the streets THAT THEY MAY BE SEEN OF MEN.' Is not all our churchgoing that we may be seen of men?"
"Then, my son, it seems that you would do away with the Church altogether in the extremity of your zeal!" said the Cardinal gently, "There must surely be some outward seeming--some city set on a hill whose light cannot be hid--some visible sign of Christ among us--"
"True, Monseigneur, but such a sign must be of so brilliant and pure a nature,--so grand an uplifted Cross of unsullied light that it shall be as the sun rising out of darkness! Oh, I would have churches built gloriously, with every possible line of beauty and curve of perfect architecture in their fabrication;--but I would have no idolatrous emblems,--no superstitious ceremonies within them,--no tawdry reliquaries of gems--no boast of the world's wealth at all; but great Art,--the result of man's great Thought rendered and given with pure simplicity! I would have great music,--and more than all I would have thanksgiving always! And if valuables were brought to the altar for gifts, the gifts should be given out again to those in need-not kept,--not left untouched like a miser's useless hoard, while one poor soul was starving!"
"My son, such a scheme of purification as yours will take centuries to accomplish," murmured Bonpre slowly, "Almost it would need Christ to come again!"
"And who shall say He will not come!" exclaimed Cyrillon fervently, "Who shall swear He is not even now among us! Has he not told us all to 'watch,' because we know not the hour at which He cometh? No, Monseigneur!--centuries are not needed for Truth to make itself manifest nowadays! We hold Science by the hand,--she is becoming our familiar friend and companion, and through her guidance we have learned that the Laws of the Universe are Truth,--Truth which cannot be contradicted; and that only the things which move and work in harmony with those laws can last. All else must perish! 'WHOSOEVER IS NOT WITH ME IS AGAINST ME'--or in other words, whosoever opposes himself to Eternal Laws must be against the whole system of the Universe. and is therefore a discord which is bound to be silenced. Monseigneur, Christ was a Divine Preacher of Truth;--and I, in my humble man's way endeavour to follow Truth. And if I ever fail now, after to-day's attempted crime, to honour the commands of Christ, and obey them as closely as I can, then pass your condemnation upon me, but not till then! Meanwhile, give me a good man's blessing!"
Deeply interested as he was, the Cardinal nevertheless still hesitated. To him, though the sayings and opinions of the famous "Gys Grandit" were not exactly new, there was something terrible in hearing him utter them with such bold and trenchant meaning. He sighed, and appeared lost in thought; till Manuel touched him gently on the arm.
"Dear friend, are you afraid to bless this man who loves our Father?"
"Afraid? My child, I am afraid of nothing--but there is grave trouble in my heart--"
"Nay, trouble should never enter there!" said Manuel softly, "Stretch out your hand!--let no human soul wait for a benediction!"
Profoundly moved, the Cardinal obeyed, and laid his white trembling hand on Cyrillon's bent head.
"May God forgive thee the intention of thy sin today!" he said, in a low and solemn tone--"May Christ guide thee out of all evil, and lead thee through the wildness of the world to Heaven's own peace, which passeth understanding!"
So gentle, so brave, so sweet and tender were the accents in which he spoke these few simple works, that the tears filled Angela's eyes, and Abbe Vergniaud, resting his head on one hand, felt a strange contraction in his throat, and began to think of possible happy days yet to be passed perchance in seclusion with this longdenied son of his, who had sprung out of the secret ways of love, first to slay and then to redeem him. Could there be a more plain and exact measuring out of law? If he had not confessed his sin he would have probably died in it suddenly without a chance of amendment or repentance--but lo!--on confession, his life had been saved as if by a miracle, and the very result of evil had been transformed into consolation! So he sat absorbed, wondering--musing- -and while the Cardinal spoke his blessing with closed eyes, all heads were bent, and faces hidden. And in the reverent silence that followed, the gentle prelate gave a sign of kind dismissal and farewell to all, which they, understanding, accepted, and at once made their brief adieuxthe Abbe Vergniaud only lingering a moment longer than the rest, to bend humbly down and kiss his Apostolic ring. Then they left him, alone with Manual.
On their way out of the house, through Angela's studio, the Princesse D'Agramont paused for a few minutes to say further kind words to the Abbe respecting the invitation she had given him to her Chateau--, and while she was thus engaged, Angela turned hurriedly to Cyrillon.
"As 'Gys Grandit' you receive many letters from strangers, do you not?"
The young man regarded her earnestly, with unconcealed admiration glowing in his fine eyes.
"Assuredly, Mademoiselle! And some of these letters are very dear to me, because they make me aware of friends I might otherwise never have known."
"You have one correspondent who is deeply interested in your theories, and who sympathises keenly in all your religious views--" she went on, lowering her eyes--"a certain Madame Angele--"
He uttered a quick exclamation of pleasure.
"You know her?"
She looked up,--her eyes sparkled--and she laid a finger on her lips.
"Keep my secret!" she said--"I am so glad to meet you personally at last!"
He stared, bewildered.
"You--you . . . !"
"Yes. I!" and she smiled--"The mysterious and Christian-Democratic 'Angele' is Angela Sovrani. So you see we have been unconscious friends for some time!"
His face grew radiant, and he made a quick movement towards her.
"Then I owe you a great debt of gratitude!" he said--"For encouragement--for sympathy--for help in dark hours!--and how unworthy I have proved of your goodness . . . what must you think of me--you--so beautiful--so good--"
She moved back a little with a warning gesture--and his words were interrupted by the Abbe, who glancing from one to the other in a little surprise, said, as he bent reverently over her hand and kissed it,--
"We must be going, Cyrillon!"
Another few moments and Angela was left alone to think over, and try to realise the strange and rapidly-occurring events of the day. Whatever her thoughts were they seemed for a long time to be of a somewhat April-like character, for her eyes brimmed over with tears even while she smiled.
XVII.
In one of the few remaining streets of Rome which the vandal hand of the modern builder and restorer has not meddled with, stands the "Casa D'Angeli", a sixteenth-century building fronted with wonderfully carved and widely projecting balconies--each balcony more or less different in design, yet forming altogether in their entirety the effect of complete sculptural harmony. The central one looks more like a cathedral shrine than the embrasure of a window, for above it angels' heads look out from the enfolding curves of their own tall wings, and a huge shield which might serve as a copy of that which Elaine kept bright for Lancelot, is poised between, bearing a lily, a cross, and a heart engraven in its quarterings. Here, leaning far forward to watch the intense gold of the Roman moon strike brightness and shadow out of the dark uplifted pinions of her winged stone guardians, stood Sylvie Hermenstein, who, in her delicate white attire, with the moonbeams resting like a halo on her soft hair, might have easily passed for some favoured saint whom the sculptured angels were protecting. And yet she was only one whom the world called "a frivolous woman of society, who lived on the admiration of men". So little did they know her,--so little indeed does the world know about any of us. It was true that Sylvie, rich, lovely, independent, and therefore indifferent to opinions, lived her own life very much according to her own ideas,--but then those ideas were far more simple and unworldly than anybody gave her credit for. She to whom all the courts of Europe were open, preferred to wander in the woods alone, reading some favourite book, to almost any other pleasure,--and as for the admiration which she won by a look or turn of her head wherever she went, nothing in all the world so utterly bored her as this influence of her own charm. For she had tried men and found them wanting. With all the pent-up passion of her woman's soul she longed to be loved,--but what she understood by love was a much purer and more exalted emotion than is common among men and women. She was suffering just now from an intense and overpowering ennui. Rome was beautiful, she averred, but dull. Stretching her fair white arms out over the impervious stoneangels she said this, and more than this, to someone within the room, who answered her in one of the most delightfully toned voices in the world--a voice that charmed the ear by its first cadences, and left the listener fascinated into believing that its music was the expression of a perfectly harmonious mind.
"You seem very discontented," said the voice, speaking in English, "But really your pathway is one of roses!"
"You think so?" and Sylvie turned her head quickly round and looked at her companion, a handsome little man of some thirty-five years of age, who stretching himself lazily full length in an arm-chair was toying with the silky ears of an exceedingly minute Japanese spaniel, Sylvie's great pet and constant companion. "Oh, mon Dieu! You, artist and idealist though you are--or shall I say as you are supposed to be," and she laughed a little, "you are like all the rest of your sex! Just because you see a woman able to smi